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EXAMINATION 

OF THE 

OBJECTIONS 

MADE IN BRITAIN AGAINST THE DOCTRINES 

OF 

GALL AND SPURZHEIM. 

BT 

J. G. SPURZHEIM, M.D. 



ARTICLE OF THE 

FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW, 



BY 



RICH. CHENEVIX, Esq. F.R.S. &c. 



WITH NOTES BY 

J. G. SPURZHEIM, M,D. 

Of the Universities of Vienna and Paris, and Licentiate of the 
Royal College of Physicians in London. 



1 Opinionum commeuta delet diei nature judicia confirmat.' — Oiceru^jt +* 
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, 18S7 






BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY MARSH, CAPEN & LYON. 

1833. 



ST 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1833, 

By Marsh, Capen & Lyon, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 



BOSTON: 

James B. Dow, Printer, 

1^2 Waahiugton-Cit. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Discussions, properly conducted, are of great 
utility. For that reason, I am always ready to 
examine every objection against our doctrines. 
But I am sorry to observe, that scientific pur- 
suits are so often degraded by selfish passions 
and the spirit of party ; that literary publica- 
tions are employed for the purposes of calumny 
and detraction ; that invectives are used instead 
of arguments ; and that, by praising friends 
and blaming rivals, the progress of the arts and 
sciences, and the improvement of men, are 
mightily retarded. 

Such behavior I will never imitate ; nay, the 
illiberal and uncandid manner in which some 
British Reviews have taken up our investiga- 
tions, has hitherto prevented me from attempting 
justification. As, however, many persons have 
no inclination, and a greater number no time 
for comparing the original works with the reports 
of the critics ; and as in science the majority of 
readers believe, without examining for them- 
2 



selves, I cannot entirely avoid controversy. We 
have never published a separate answer to sin- 
gle pamphlets, but merely considered the objec- 
tions in our lectures or in our works, when 
treating of the respective objects. Our maxim 
is, never to fight with darkness, but to endeavor 
to bring light. 

I am now to submit to the public some obser- 
vations on the objections of our principal antag- 
onists in Great Britain, confining myself to the 
points in question, and depending on the moral 
sense, the judgment and observation, of my 
readers. In short and concise expressions I 
will state the real object of cur inquiries, and 
the true import of our propositions, and then 
compare the interpretations of the chief Reviews, 
especially of the literary gospel of Edinburgh. 
At the same time I will mention an antagonist, 
who was at first anonymous, but did not long 
conceal himself; who then appeared as an au- 
thor on the structure of the brain, and at last as 
a historian of the anatomy of that organ. 

The Edinburgh Reviewer speaks (No. 49. p. 
229.) of ' a conscientious discharge of duty on 
this occasion ; ' it therefore is right to name him 
accordingly. The author of the Treatise on the 
Brain, in a pamphlet, asserts, that the anatomy 



of the brain is imperfectly known, even to the 
distinguished teachers of the medical art in 
Edinburgh ; that the persons I have addressed, 
never perhaps have completed their studies in 
this department, (p. 4. ) that 1 have shown the 
corpus dentatum to spectators, most of whom 
had never seen it before, and not one of whom 
had rendered himself familiar with its appear- 
ance by dissection,' p. 73.* Hence, if there 
be only one person in Edinburgh who can judge 
of the appearances of brown and white, he 
deserves the name of anatomist par excellence. 
As in his Treatise on the Brain he states (Pref. 
ix.) that he has scrupulously avoided the intro- 

* As the reader may wish to know who my auditors were, I will 
mention the names of some gentlemen. At the first demonstration 
were present, Dr. John Thomson, Prof. Regius of Military Surgery ; 
Dr. Barclay, Lecturer on Anatomy and Surgery; Dr. Duncan, junior, 
Prof, of Medical Jurisprudence ; Drs. Emery and Irvin, of the Military 
Staff. At the second, were Dr. Rutherford, Prof, of Botany ; Dr. Home, 
Prof, of Materia Medica; Dr. Thomas Brown, Prof, of Moral Philoso- 
phy ; Prof. Jamieson; Drs. Farquharson, Dewar, Sanders, Anderson, 
and a great number of professional gentlemen. At the Physical Society 
I gave the demonstration in presence of Dr. Monro, junior, Prof, of 
Anatomy and Surgery ; Drs. Rutherford, Barclay, and Sanders ; Mr. 
Bryce, President of the College of Surgeons; Mr. George Bell, and a 
numerous audience of medical gentlemen. Since that time, I have 
often repeated these demonstrations in private parties, and always to 
the satisfaction of the spectators. It is icorthy of notice, that the essen- 
tial point alluded to, was, whether there is brown matter in the corpus 
dentatum ? This had been denied by the Edinburgh Review, p. 264. 



duction of any physiological matter ; and as in 
the pamphlet he maintains, that the anatomy of 
the brain, in a physiological point of vieiv, is for- 
tunately not of essential consequence in the 
practice of medicine, (p. 3.) I will style him a 
mechanical dissector. Another name which he 
merits, is that of historian, because he has com- 
piled facts, excellent indeed, — concerning the 
history of the anatomy of the brain. 

The profession of a critical reviewer is ac- 
knowledged to be very extensive ; his infallibility 
is understood : hence, without any previous 
study, he can decide all questions on anatomy, 
physiology, pathology, philosophy, the arts, ard, 
in short, on all the branches of knowledge ; na y, 
he can criticise books without reading them. 
He is never at a loss, and arrogates at least the 
the appearance of talents. If his own authority 
is not sufficient to impose on the public, a sacred 
band of literary oligarchs answer for his correct- 
ness, and, for that reason, he assumes the 
mighty ive of sovereignty. 

Every one will perceive, that our adversaries 
are very witty men. They deal extensively in 
the ridiculous ; and when they have leisure to 
become serious, they speak of the motives and 



dangerous consequences of our inquiries ; but their 
generous minds need not be apprehensive, since 
they declare our doctrines c incredible and dis- 
graceful nonsense, absurd theories, trash, and 
despicable trumpery.' If that is the case, 
while, as they admit, we make proselytes, they 
have, indeed, very little confidence in the dis- 
cernment of their countrymen. Why do they 
not rather listen to our constant declaration, that 
one fact, well observed, is more decisive to us 
than a thousand opinions, and all the metaphys- 
ical reasoning of the schools ; and that facts 
alone can expel such intruders as our doctrines ? 
These observations will be divided into three 
Chapters. The first will contain Anatomical, 
the second Physiological, and the third Philo- 
sophical considerations. 



2* 



J 



OBSERVATIONS, &c. 



CHAPTER I. 

ANATOMY.— section i. 

We have examined the anatomy of the nervous system 
in general, and of the brain in particular, in strict re- 
lation to physiology and pathology. This we have re- 
peated in our demonstrations and in our works. When 
we delivered the Memoir on our Anatomical Inquiries 
to the French Institute in 1S08, we mentioned in a 
letter to that learned Society, that we present ' Une De- 
scription du Systeme Nerveux, moins d'apres sa structure 
physique, et ses formes mecaniques que d'apres des Vues 
Philosophiques et Physiologiques que des hommes habitues 
a des considerations superieures ne refuseront point d'ac- 
cueillir." The same idea is expressed in my work on 
Physiognomy, p. 13. and in the article Cervemj for 
the Dictionnaire [des Sciences Medicates, vol. iv. Paris, 
1813, § 1. and 2. In our works we have positively stated, 
that physiological and pathological facts have induced us to 
examine the structure of the brain. 

The conscientious critic, however, instead of examining 
our views, and of judging accordingly, thought it his duty 
only to abuse our propositions, (or, in their polite phraseol- 



12 

ogy, to cut them down,) and to declare that " in this 
department we have displayed more quackery than in any 
other ; and that our bad faith is here the more unpardon- 
able, that it was so much more likely to escape detection,' 
p. 254. The anatomist par excellence, has scrupulously 
avoided the introduction of any physiological matter. He 
confines himself to descriptions of mere mechanical forms, 
measurements, and shades of color of individual and iso- 
lated parts. * 

* There are, however, many discoveries of that kind in his book, 
which ought not to be overlooked. He, for instance, has discovered, 
that the dura mater must be excluded from the membranes of the brain ; 
because l it seems more natural to regard it as forming a part of the 
sides or walls of the cranium,' p. 150. while other anatomists speak 
of two lamellae of the dura mater ; one of which belongs to the internal 
sides of the skull, and the other to the brain. 

Another great discovery of the mechanical dissector is the number of 
cul-de-sacs in the encephalon. A small one is mentioned, p. 84. shaped 
like a point of a writing pen ; another, in p. 98. about a sixth of an inch 
deep ; a third, in p. 99. of a conical shape ; a fourth, p. 104. ; and two 
more, p. 112. A deep triangular pit is mentioned, p. 180. 

Other anatomists speak merely of two sorts of substance in the brain, 
of a grey or cineritious, and of a white. The mechanical dissector has 
first described a variety of colors, such as a brown, a wood-brown nearly 
the same as a nut-brown, a dark-brown, a greyish-brown, a reddish- 
brown, a wine-yellow; a white, an orange-white, a yellow-white, a 
reddish-white, and a bright white. 

Important discoveries with respect to the supposed cerebral nerves 
will be mentioned afterwards. Here I will only notice his discoveries 
concerning the brain. He imagines, that, in the natural ' situation of 
parts, the anterior commissure is seldom more than a tenth of an inch 
in length,' while it is continued to the middle lobes ; and ' he imagines 
also, that it is placed anterior to the pillars of the fornix, and seems to 
unite them together,' p, 100. while it is quite detached from them. He 



13 

Willis, Vieussens, Haller, Vicq d'Azyr, Prochaska, 
Soemmerring, Reil, Bicbat, Cuvier, Portal, Sabatier, 
and all living anatomists of distinction, examine conjointly 
the structure and functions of the parts, and even intersperse 
pathological remarks. Every practical man of the profes- 
sion will agree with Mr. Lawrence, (Two Introductory 
Lectures, p. 116.) when he speaks of separating anatomy 
and physiology from one another ; and says, ' What would 
you think of a person who should describe to you a watch 
or a steam-engine in this way? who would exhibit to you 
all the parts, and show their position, without any explana- 
tion of their uses ; witho I any reference to that nice 
adjustment and mutual action, which render the one subser- 
vient to the important purpose of marking the division of 
time, and enable us by the other to execute the most stu- 
pendous movements of human labor, and to produce the 
most striking results of human ingenuity ? As I cannot for 
my own part discern, what purpose of utility, much less 
what end of interest or amusement, could be answered by 
a merely anatomical detail ; and as the separation of the 
science of organization from that of life, seems to us most 

has discovered, that the appearances which may be seen without actual 
dissection, or with very little dissection, or by removing the cerebellum, 
may be called external, p. 95. 

An important discovery consists in the invention and application of 
new names. By this discovery, every thing appears new in the des- 
cription, at least so far as the names are concerned; and that you may 
not suspect that you are reading about things which you knew before, 
the old synonymes are suppressed. This is particularly the case with 
the description of the ventricles, p. 104. Indeed, such discoveries as the 
preceding cannot fail to amuse the man of mechanical genius. 



14 

violent and unnatural, I shall not disjoin anatomy and 
physiology.' 

Our ingenious mechanician affords novel information, 
when he tells his readers, that anatomical knowledge of 
the brain, in a physiological point of view, is fortunately 
not of essential consequence in the practice of medicine ; 
and that skilful and eminent practitioners are satisfied, and 
justly so, with a general view of this organ, p. 3. ; and that 
anatomy of the brain may be studied less with a view to 
refined physiological research, than to the practice of physic, 
p. 183. All other physicians, however, of sound judgment, 
at all times have admitted as a ^principle, that pathology is 
to be founded on physiology, and that without understand- 
ing the functions in the state of health, it is impossible to 
judge of their derangements. Who believes, that in the 
practice of medicine it is of no importance to know the 
anatomy and physiology of the heart, of the lungs, liver, 
stomach, &;c ? Are the structure and functions of the five 
senses not of equal importance ? And will those of the 
brain and its parts be deemed less worthy of considera- 
tion ? Shall the most delicate or most complex organiza- 
tion be declared useless ? If, on the contrary, the brain 
alone explains the various instincts of animals, and all the 
modified manifestations of the human mind ; if it alone 
accounts for the innateness of genius ; if it is certain, that 
each species of manifestation of the mind has its appropri- 
ate part in the brain ; if all manifestations of the mind, in 
the state of health and disease, find their explanation only in 
the cerebral organization ; if the influence of the affections 
and passions on the bodily constitution is indubitable, and 



15 

vice versa ; how is it then possible, that a lecturer on the 
institutions of medicine can separate the structure and func- 
tions of the organization ? can maintain, that a skilful phy- 
sician does not need accurate knowledge of anatomy and 
physiology? is justly indifferent with respect to the struc- 
ture and functions of the brain, as well as to the con- 
nexions of its parts with each other, and with the w T hole 
body ? 

Such notions will not, I trust, induce those of the medi- 
cal profession to neglect the most interesting study of all, 
viz. that of man. Indeed, the examination of the nervous 
system is not only important, because all functions of the 
body, such as digestion, circulation, respiration, nutrition, 
secretion, and excretion, depend on it, but also because the 
five senses, all inclinations and sentiments, all moral and 
intellectual faculties, and all the characteristics of humanity, 
are evinced by means of the nervous system alone. Thus, 
the medical profession is not only interested in studying the 
human mind with respect to bodily health, and particularly 
with respect to insanity ; but it is their province to improve 
the knowledge of the mental powers, since these can be 
discovered only by the study of the brain and its parts. 
No profession is better prepared than that of the physician 
by accessory knowledge, and by the study of nature in 
general ; nor is any one so frequently and so seriously 
admonished to revise opinions, and to forsake hypothetical 
reasoning, in order to follow the simple method of experi- 
ence. No philosopher is more intimately convinced, that 
all our knowledge ought to be reduced to a rational mode 
of judging from experiment and observation ; while a spec- 



16 

ulative philosopher thinks, that ' the labors of metaphysi- 
cians can only be rewarded by attentive and patient reflec- 
tion on the subjects of their own consciousness.' — (Dugald 
Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 
5th edit. p. 8.) According to such a precept, every one 
has a right to take himself as a standard for the rest of 
mankind : A Caraib metaphysician may find, that destruc- 
tion is the first moral principle. 

The physician, besides, is placed in circumstances the 
most conducive to a profound and certain knowledge of 
man. No one has such opportunities of observing men at 
all times, and in all situations. He alone is present during 
the night and the day, to witness the most intimate concerns, 
and the most secret events of domestic life. Good and bad 
men, when sick, with difficulty conceal from him their true 
sentiments. Who desires not the friendship of the man, 
whom he trusts with his own life, or with that of his wife 
and of his children ? To such a man, as knowing all that 
belongs to our nature, we unfold the most secret thoughts, 
and we acknowledge our frailties and our errors, in order 
that he may judge truly concerning our situations. There 
is consequently no man more called upon, no man more 
necessitated to study mankind, than the physician. I leave it 
now to the reader, and to those who practise the healing art, 
to decide, whether a person contributes to the celebrity of 
his profession by inculcating such doctrines ? 

Thus, only according to a philosophy, which slates that 
every one may take his own consciousness as the measure- 
ment of that of all men, are our British antagonists excusa- 
ble — according to such a philosophy alone, is it unnecessary 



17 

for them to study the spirit of our inquiries. As they can- 
not raise their minds above mechanical forms and shades of 
color ; as they do not even feel the necessity of considering 
the parts of the nervous system in connexion ; as they even 
invent artificial divisions ; how could their judgment of our 
investigations be sound, equitable, and just ? 

SECTION II. 

In our anatomical views, which are always connected 
with physiology, pathology, and philosophy, the first point 
to be considered is, that there is no common origin of the 
nerves ; that all descriptions of the spinal cord as a prolon- 
gation of the brain are incorrect; that no nerve, and no 
cerebral part, owes its origin to any other ; but that all of 
them, on account of their mutual influence, are in commu- 
nication. (Vide Memoir to the French Institute, sect. 1. ; 
Diciionnaire des Sciences Medicates, Art. Cerveau, § 
3. No. 1, 2, 3 and 4. ; Physiognomical System, p. 13 
-18.) 

Such considerations have entirely escaped the conscien- 
tious Reviewer and mechanical Dissector. 

SECTION III. 

The second point to be considered is, that the general 
form and arrangement of the nervous system are modified 
in different beings. In the superior animals, it is divided 
into the nerves of the abdomen and thorax, the spinal cord, 
the supposed cerebral nerves, and the cerebellum and brain. 



18 

The spinal cord is composed of a series of swellings 
between two undulatory lines. These swellings are propor- 
tionate to the nerves, which go off. 

The conscientious Reviewer is satisfied with stating, that 
our descriptions of the spinal cord 'abound in conjectures, 
and assumptions, and inaccuracies,' p. 267. The mechan- 
ical Dissector has not attended to comparative anatomy, 
and does not mention any thing of that kind. The Histo- 
rian is in unison with the Reviewer, and merely declares, 
that our statements are unfounded, p. 179. Comparative 
anatomy, however, shows great modifications in the general 
form and arrangement of the nervous system, as in the 
caterpillar, lobster, frog, fish, bird, or quadruped. At the 
Physical Society, and in Dr. Barclay's lecture-room, I have 
shown to my auditors the swellings of the spinal cord of a 
calf. As our statements are not attacked in detail, I do not 
repeat what is mentioned in our works. 

SECTION IV. 

The next points to be examined concern the medulla 
oblongata, and the supposed cerebral nerves. The me- 
dulla oblongata does not belong to the spinal cord, and the 
supposed cerebral nerves have different origins from what 
anatomists generally believe. 

The literary gospel does not embrace these points ; I 
have only to consider the respective discoveries of the me- 
chanical Dissector. He believes, that the medulla oblon- 
gata, though situate in the head, belongs to the spine ; he 
calls it the cranial portion of the spinal cord, and fixes its 
termination to the lower edge of the pons Varolii, p. 175. 



19 

In our views, a great portion of the medulla oblongata 
belongs to the greatest number of the supposed cerebral 
nerves ; the rest to the cerebellum and brain. In my sec- 
ond demonstration in Edinburgh, before a numerous and 
respectable audience, the mechanical Dissector repeatedly 
protested against my stating, that the medulla oblongata is 
not interrupted, but continued to the cerebellum and brain, 
or rather that both, by means of the medulla oblongata, 
are in communication with the nervous mass of the rest of 
the body. The gentlemen who were present will recollect, 
that I twice asked the Dissector, whether he could show 
the interruption of the pyramids, since he protested against 
their continuation ? Now, as a historian, four months 
later, he tells us, that the idea of that very commu- 
nication of the pyramids with the crura cerebri has been 
known a century and a half. The man of duty either was 
or was not acquainted with the fact. In the first case, why 
did he protest against it ? and why did he not state it in his 
book, professedly written on the brain ? There he termi- 
nates the brain at the upper edge of the pons, ascribes the 
mass of the pons to the cerebellum, and the medulla oblon- 
gata to the spinal cord. In the second case, he has 
learned it since, though he might have found in our works 
the same authors quoted, whom he, as historian, now 
appeals to, to prove that the idea is not original. More of 
this tergiversation afterwards. 

This discoverer calls the abductor, trigeminal, facial, and 
auditory nerves, cerebellar, p. 202. and places their origins 
in the peduncles of the cerebellum, p. 207 — 210. viz. in 
the lateral portion of the annular protuberance, p. 112. 



20 

Comparative, as well as human anatomy, however, shows 
the contrary. These nerves exist in fishes and birds, 
though these animals have no annular protuberance, and in 
the greater number of quadrupeds these nerves go off 
behind the pons ; how then can they originate from the 
pons ? Even in the human brain, we can trace the fifth 
pair through the pons to the corpora restiformia of the 
medulla oblongata. I have done it in presence of many in 
Edinburgh, as well as in other places. 

He has further discovered that the facial and acoustic 
nerves originate from the same spot, p. 209, 210. while 
they go off at quite different places, the facial nerve at the 
external edge of the corpus olivare, and the auditory nerve 
behind the medulla oblongata in the fourth ventricle. He 
has also discovered, that the optic nerve arises from the 
anterior corner of the commissure of the tractus optici, p. 
205. viz. c from the part situate before the pituitary gland 
and infundibulum,' p. 83. while even in the infancy of 
anatomy, the optic nerve has been traced farther back. 
Comparative and morbid anatomy amply elucidate this 
point. In many fishes, the optic nerves are placed only 
over each other without adhesion ; and in quadrupeds and 
man, when one of the optic nerves is injured and diminished 
in size, the diminution is not only visible as far as their 
union or partial decussation, but passes across to the oppo- 
site side, backward, and proceeds to the anterior pair of 
the corpora quadrigemina. 

By comparative views we have proved, that the optic 
thalami in birds and quadrupeds have been confounded, 
and the same name given to quite different parts of the 



21 

brain ; and that the optic thalami in quadrupeds do not be- 
long to the optic nerves, but to the brain proper. 

section v. 

The fourth consideration is with respect to the com- 
munication of the cerebellum and brain with the rest of the 
nervous system. 

The conscientious Reviewer, and Anatomist par excellence, 
had nothing to say in this respect; but the Historian, ' after 
a painful research y of four months, (p. 3.) has contrived to 
find matter for opposition. He maintains, ' that it is impos- 
sible to trace any fibres, either from the corpus restiforme 
or from any other part of the medulla oblongata, into the 
corpus dentatum,' p. 3. 

The Historian is wrong in ascribing to us the discovery 
of the communication between the cerebellum and the cor- 
pus restiforme. During his ' painful research,' he might 
have found the history of this communication, as well as 
that of the brain with the medulla oblongata. This very 
name oblongata, is only explained by the medulla of the 
brain and cerebellum having been considered as continued 
to the spine. A great number of anatomists speak of pro- 
longations, or crura, or processus cerebelli ad medullum ob- 
longatam, and distinguish them from the crura or processus or 
pedunculi cerebelli ad pontem. We consider this ancient view 
of communication as correct; the ancients only erred in 
imagining that one part gave origin to another. In fact, the 
connexion between one bundle of the corpus restiforme and 
the corpus dentatum of the cerebellum, is easily shown in 
3* 



22 

scraping off the auditory nerve from the external surface of 
the corpus restiforme, and following the direction of the 
bundles. I have shown it in Dr. Barclay's lecture-room, 
and I am ready to do so to every one who procures a fresh 
brain. 

The communication of the brain with the rest of the 
nervous system, requires more full exposition. Here the 
Dissector appears in his proper light and colors. He 
himself calls the attention of the public to the second de- 
monstration. I therefore must be excused for speaking of 
it. When I demonstrated the decussation of the pyramids, 
he began the controversy with the question, Whether we 
maintain to have first discovered the decussation ? As His- 
torian, he tells us, that he thought it his duty, in justice to 
preceding anatomists, to make their claims known to my 
audience, p. 74. My answer was, that our works show the 
contrary, and that we have given the history of the de- 
cussation. I then remarked, that before us, many anato- 
mists have spoken of a decussation of the nerves, because 
injuries affecting the brain are often propagated on the op- 
posite side of the body ; that, however, there are other ob- 
servations on record, where injuries of the brain are visible 
on the same side with the injury ; that we have first discov- 
ered, that only a part of the brain is in communication with 
the opposite side of the nervous system, and the other part 
with the nerves of the same side. He was obliged to allow 
that this distinction is new. 

I beg leave to make a few observations on this occasion. 
The man of duty, when he wrote professedly on the brain, 
did not mention a single author who had spoken of the 



23 

decussation. He himself speaks of ' two or three ridges, 
which would hardly have been worthy of particular notice, 
were it not for absurd theories with which they have often been 
connected in physiological writings, 5 p. 177. On the other 
hand, in our works, the names of all the authors, whom he, 
as historian, quotes, are given, and many more. He speaks 
of Mistichelli as the first, while in our Memoir we have 
stated, that the decussation has been described by the most 
ancient anatomists, such as Aretaeus and Cassius ; that af- 
terwards it had been neglected ; but that pathological facts 
called again the attention of Fabricius de Hilden to it in the 
year 1581. We have quoted Mistichelli, in 1709, Petit, 
Lieutand, Santorini, Winslow, Soemmerring, and Portal. 
Has now the man of duty, as historian, a right to accuse us 
Q of neglect and ignorance against every preceding inquirer? 
p. 2. while he, on this occasion, as author, does not quote 
one, and we have quoted them all, and a greater number than 
he as historian ?' Is it not rather our duty to mention the 
preceding authors when we write a book, than when we 
give outlines of a demonstration, and in an oral com- 
munication ? 

This is not yet the whole. The Historian says, p. 69. 
1 The structure in question (decussation of the pyramids) 
has been taken notice of, ever since its discovery, in ele- 
mentary works of the highest reputation, and such as ana- 
tomists still daily consult ; and it has been particularly men- 
tioned in the best and most generally known treatises on the 
brain, so that there is as little room for maintaining that it 
has been overlooked by modern anatomists, as that the 



24 

description of the corpora pyramidalia themselves has been 
forgotten* 

Does the man of duty not accuse himself by this passage i 
Let us admit the case to be as he says ; I then reply, that 
he had no reason to put his question. If the decussation is 
so generally known, no one could be mistaken. In that 
case, he could have asked me with the same propriety, 
whether w T e maintain to be the first who have described 
the pyramidal bundles, since, according to his own words, 
c the decussation is as little overlooked as the description of 
the pyramids ?' 

But the reader would be mistaken, did he think the decus- 
sation as generally known as the Historian alleges. To 
prove that this anatomical point was not sufficiently under- 
stood, nor completely ascertained by the modern anatomists, 
I shall examine a few works of those authors whom the 
Historian has quoted. Vicq d'Azyr, for instance, did not 
know the true decussation, nor did he represent it. He 
speaks of such a thing, and points out a place where he 
looked for it ; but there it does not exist. This is evident 
from comparing his own passages with nature. In explain- 
ing the 22d plate, he says, ' Lorsqu'on ecarte le sillon 12, 
15, entre les corps pyramidaux, on apercoit de petits cor- 
dons blanchatres et medullaires qui se portent d'un cote a 
l'autre comme autant de petites commissures dont la direc- 
tion varie.' In explaining the 23d plate, he marks the same 
place by b. b. b. b. and says, that these are transverse fibres. 
Plate 17. fig. 1. 57, and 58, he says of the pyramidal bundles, 
6 Elles sont separees de la portuberance annulaire par un 
petit enforcement 82, 82, et entre ces corps se trouve une 



25 

fente ou division longitudinale 59, 59, au fond de laquelle 
on voit, lorsqu'on ecarte les bords, plusieurs cordons blancs 
qui se dirigent d'un cote a l'autre en maniere de commis- 
sures, les uns transversalement, les autres obliquement.' 

Dumas and Boyer maintain that palsy of the opposite 
side in injuries of the head is not at all explained by the 
anatomy, because the decussation of the medulla oblon- 
gata can by no means be proved, c qu'il n'est rien moins que 
prouve par 1' anatomic' 

Sabatier quotes the passage of Francois Pourfour du 
Petit ; but he adds, that fc le pretendu entrecroisement 
des fibres de la moelle allongee n'est rien moins que cer- 
tain.' 

Chaussier, who with Vicq d'Azyr, belongs to the few 
quoted by the Dissector, also quotes the passage of du 
Petit, and spe aks of Santorini and his plates. 'Mais, dit 
il, en examinant les objets de plus pres, en suivant atten- 
tivement les progres de la preparation, les changements que 
produit l'ecartment, le tiraillement des parties, il nous a 
paru que ces pretendus faisceaux des fibres transversales ou 
obliques sont uniquement le resultat de la traction que Ton 
exerce sur le tissu de la partie, qui avant de se dechirer, 
s'allonge et prend l'apparence fibreuse,' p. 142. 

How could the impartial Historian overlook such pas- 
sages in books he quotes ? and if he did not overlook them, 
how T can he say, that the decussation was generally known ? 
I can affirm, that at the universities and colleges where we 
have demonstrated the brain in Germany, Denmark, Hol- 
land, France, Great Britain, and Ireland, the decussation 
was not shown to the pupils before the publication of our 



26 

works. The French commissioners felt the truth, and al- 
lowed that we had recalled the attention of physiologists to 
the decussation of the pyramids, though they deny us the 
merit of having discovered it. They ought to have said, 
that we had not discovered it the first. We can assert, 
that we were not taught it in the school, nor had we learned 
it from books. Pathological facts alone called our atten- 
tion to it. Without pathological considerations it must ap- 
pear indifferent. For that very reason, the mechanical 
Dissector speaks of it as scarcely worthy of particular notice. 
He himself, also, may still become acquainted with some 
modifications which the decussation presents. The descrip- 
tion of two or three ridges is very incomplete. We think 
that our mode of demonstrating it is preferable to that of 
Santorini, who employed a long and peculiar maceration, 
while, by our mode of proceeding, we can show it in every 
fresh brain. 

SECTION VT. 

The fifth point which may be discussed, is our method 
of dissecting the brain. The common way consists in 
slicing it, whether to begin from above, as most commonly 
is done, or from below, or from the sides ; or in cutting off 
small portions, and showing their mechanical appearances. 
Every one who has attended anatomical lectures, or will 
look at anatomical works, is aware that I speak truth. The 
descriptions given by the mechanical Dissector himself, and 
the macerated pieces which he showed in the second de- 
monstration, prove the same statement. 



27 

We consider the parts in connexion with, and in rela- 
tion to one another : we observe what is general or con- 
stant, and we are as much convinced of the modifications 
of every part of each brain, as of those of every other part of 
the body. We always begin the dissection at the medulla 
oblongata, and examine the successive additions and distri- 
butions towards the convolutions. We seldom cut, but 
mostly scrape ; because the substance, on account of its 
delicacy, when cut, does not show its structure. The con- 
scientious Reviewer had suggested, that our proceeding [is 
limited to the use of the handle of the scalpel alone. The 
Historian adds, * the blade of the scalpel, and the points of 
our fingers ;' but he calls this proceeding rude, p. 26. It 
seems he had forgotten what he wrote on the previous page 
17. There he has said, ' Every anatomist, who has enjoyed 
frequent opportunities of examining the recent brain, must 
have observed, that there are particular portions of the white 
substance, which tear much more readily in one particular 
direction that in any other ; and that the surfaces of the 
lacerated parts in the former case, but never in the latter, 
put on an appearance similar to that exhibited by a piece 
of muscle, or of any other fibrous nature, when torn in the 
direction of the fibres.' May I not suppose, that this hero 
of the scalpel tears and lacerates with his fingers ; and that, 
if he had used them more dexterously, he would have made 
fewer mistakes. I sometimes make use of my fingers, to 
obviate an objection which has been made in Germany, 
France, and even in Edinburgh, viz. that we artificially 
form the appearances in the brain by the handle of the scal- 
pel, or that we play a trick on the spectators. The con- 



28 

scientious Reviewer himself maintains, that we must know 
the incorrectness of our assertions, and show to our less 
knowing pupils the fibrous structure of the white matter in 
some portion of the brain, where, in consequence of the 
two kinds of matter, the white is disposed in threads through 
the brown, p. 256. 

For the demonstration of many parts, we prefer fresh 
brains. The structure of others may be better seen, when 
they are previously macerated in diluted acids or alcohol. 
Our works attest, that we have employed various means, 
especially in examining the structure of the convolutions. 
Several adversaries in Germany, particularly Prof. Ack- 
ermann at Heidelberg, objected against the preparation of 
the brain by maceration. They maintained, that this ap- 
pearance is not natural, but the result of a chemical process. 
An example may be mentioned with glass, which is a uni- 
form mass. In the southern countries, in Paris, for in- 
stance, windows exposed to the sun and moon split into 
innumerable scales ; this appearance is not natural, but the 
result of a chemical process. To obviate that objection, 
we prefer proving our statements on fresh brains. At the 
same time, we have always answered, that the white sub- 
stance of the brain must have naturally a fibrous disposition, 
because the appearance is the same under all the very 
various circumstances, whether, for instance, examined fresh 
or coagulated. 

It is, however, conceivable, that in towns, as in Edin- 
burgh and Halle, where we cannot procure a number of 
fresh brains, the dissector may prefer to keep the parts in 
spirits. Even in towns where there is a great facility of 



29 

procuring fresh brains, we get some which are entirely unfit 
lor demonstration. If we unfortunately meet such a one, 
shall we draw the inference, that in no fresh brain whatever 
the structure can be seen ? Indeed, in the dissecting rooms 
at Halle and Edinburgh we may be induced to say with 
Reil, that our method in dissecting fresh brains is not suffi- 
cient, and that the cerebral mass is too pulpy and too deli- 
quescent, (zu breyigt und zerfliessbar) for being examined 
in connexion. The conscientious Reviewer, p. 236, quotes 
this passage of Reil ; and the only meaning is, that Reil at 
Halle found the brains too soft, and thought it necessary to 
prepare them by maceration. The Historian must know 
very little of the German language, on account of his erro- 
neous interpretation of this passage, p. 1SS. If ignorance 
of the 1 be not the cause, he has invented a story 

worthy of a conscientious Reviewer. I shall afterwards 
give the history as it happened between Reil and us. In 
answer to Reil, I here only state, that in London, Dublin, 
Paris, and Vienna, we can easily procure brains, the parts 
of which are firm enough to be examined in connexion, 
without p.ny previous coagulation. 

The proceeding of Vieussens has only in common with 
ours, that, in examining the parts of the brain, he scraped : 
In the rest he was guided by quite other principles ; began 
with the convolutions, and cut them off round the hemis- 
pheres, to shew the centrum ovale, which, to this day, is 
demonstrated and called by his name. He first considered 
all medullary fibres to originate from the cortical substance 
of the convolutions, and to be concentrated in the midst of 

the hemispheres ; he then examined the corpus callosum, 
4 



30 

the fornix, plexus choroides, nates, and testes. In the first 
thirteen plates he represents only cuts from above downward. 
At the end he examines the cerebellum and medulla oblon- 
gata, so that he represents the connexion between crura and 
the medulla oblongata in his last plate. Proceeding from 
above downward, he speaks of his usual method, (institutum 
servando sectionis ordinem).* 

The Historian accuses us of having learned our pro- 
ceeding from other books : Why has he not learned to 
consider the cerebral parts in connexion ? why has he con- 
tinued to slice and cut the brain like cheese ? None of 
our predecessors has proceeded in the way we do ; hence 
it was impossible to learn our method from them. I have 
no objection that the brain should be examined in various 
ways ; but one method may be preferable to another, and 
we think ours the best to show the connexion of the parts, 
and we think it indispensable for those who examine the 
brain with physiological and pathological views. 

SECTION VII. 

A sixth consideration concerns the two sorts of substances, 
of which the nervous system is composed ; one greyish and 
soft, and of unknown organization, the other white, and of 
fibrous structure. Both are together, and proportionate to 
each other. 

The Historian quotes Vieussens, Haller, Mayer, Reil, 
Portal, and Cuvier to prove, that the fibrous structure of the 
brain was known. The reader would be mistaken if he 

* Nevrol. univ. p. 67. 



31 

thought, that in our works we have not quoted authors of 
that kind. We have mentioned the same and others, such 
as Loewenhock, Stenon, Prochaska, Soemmering, Sahatier, 
and others. In a passage of our memoir, p. 348, we Mjft 
4 Bonnet ne trouve dans le C jue des ti 

une auroitsa fonction particulien." W D wr thought 

of being the first who maintain that the brain is fibrous, 
though we know also that the most erroneous opinions h 
been entertained with respt Our prin- 

cipal ideas are the successive additions, and the aggregation 
of vario ; the two great sets of fi un- 

folding of die convolutions, as I propo- tail ill I 

sequel. 

I h :nentioned, thai we do not limit our pro- 

le of the s< s the conscientious 

R J56, and Dissector, p. 150, insinun: 

When the Dissector wrote his hook, the fibrous appearance 
could never be displayed by dividing with 

a sharp scalpel, p. \26.; i\< II dorian, es, 

that many authors, diced the brain, W< 

acrj is structure. As Author, h< 

of nervous coni .\ ; ner- 

vou s fibres as fine as hairs, p. 137.; 

rsing, p. L38.J innumerable fine fibres 
a:, p 138. ; and what is more, ■ when a portion of 
brown nervous matter, which forms a covering to the con- 
il exposed to the action of alcohol, or acids, or 
boiling oil, and is then torn asunder, it exhibits a fibrous 
appearance,' p. 127 — As Historian he equally states, that 
4 the apparent fibrousness of the white substance, both in 



32 

the recent state, and after coagulation with boiling oil, alco- 
hol, acids, he. has been long known, and no opinion has 
been more prevalent than that this substance is really 
fibrous,' p. 16. 

Now, after that language as Author and Historian, what 
shall I think of such a man, who, in my second demonstra- 
tion, before a numerous and respectable audience, came 
forward and protested against my using the name of fibres, 
and diverging fibres ? who asked me, like a school-boy, 
w T hat I call diverging 1 and who, when I requested him to 
give a name to what he saw, called it c fibrous appearance? 

According to our ideas and observations, there is a 
brown and white matter in the medulla oblongata ; and the 
white goes out of the grey. The Historian replies, p. 34, 
* that the origin of all or even of any of the fibres from the grey 
substance of the medulla oblongata, is a mere assumption.' — 
No such matter or grey substance has been pointed out as 
attached to the fasciculi, or intermixed with them, p. 35. 
He doubts, whether the corpora pyramidalia increase during 
their ascent, p. 76. and, therefore, in his book on the brain, 
has chosen the name of oblong bundles ; but he calls upon 
us, according to our own hypothesis, to point out the grey 
matter which affords the reinforcing fibres, p. 76. 

How shall I prove the existence of brown matter to him, 
who, in presence of two hundred spectators, declared he 
saw no brown substance, while all beside declared they did ? 
I know that there are persons who cannot distinguish one color 
from another, brown or red, for instance, from green ; but 
the mechanical dissector having found in the brain so many 
shades of brown cannot be excused by that natural defect. 



33 

The only explanation in his favor may be, that nervous 
affections are often intermittent. Hence it may be, that 
just on that day his sight was disturbed, and could not dis- 
_uish either fibres or colors. But what astonishes me is, 
that his affection continues so long, and that he cannot vet see 
brown matter in the medulla oblongata, and in the pons. 
As he cannot see it, he adheres more to the literary gosj 
which, | denies the brown matter in the pons, than to 

his recent quotations in his historical treatise. If he himself 
has no confidence in Santorini, why does h to 

his readers that writer ii ;it author ? l (which by 

1 believe him to be).' T: ran, h 

qooteSj p. 66. the passage of Santorini, relative to the I 
cu.< vmtorini states, that he employed along 

maceration ; ■ for in this way, the fibres hem- very much 
washed, and the \OU$ matter 

in great red, and the tfl of the membranes 

becoming loose, th- more clearly seen f 

and Ltter, be jat there is no grey sub- 

stance to afford the retnforcj I. In speaking of the 

we shrill find that the Historian, with respect to 
Vieussens, commits the same error of which he is here 
Santorini. Why does he consider his readers 
endowed with so little power of comparison ? 

SECTION VIII. 

In our views, the cerebellum offers the following consid- 
erations : It is a particular apparatus, in connexion with, 
but independent of, the rest of the nervous system as to its 

existence and functions. In reptiles and fishes it is single 
4* 



34 

and smooth, in birds single and lamellated, in quadrupeds 
lamellated and augmented by lateral parts. Animals with a 
single cerebellum have no pons ; in quadrupeds the pons is 
always proportionate to the lateral parts; the cerebellum is 
in communication with the medulla oblongata by a fasciculus 
of the corpora restiformia ; at the spot of this communica- 
tion there is greyish matter, the whole of which is called by 
anatomists the corpus dentatum, orserratum, or rhomboideum, 
or nucleus, or zig-zag : The brown matter of the cerebel- 
lum is proportionate to the white : Finally, the cerebellum 
is smaller in young animals and in children than in adults, 
and most commonly smaller in females than in males. 

By the conscientious Reviewer, Dissector, and Historian, 
only some mechanical appearances are spoken of. The 
Historian reproaches me for not having shown, in the sec- 
ond demonstration, the set of fibres which bring the cere- 
bellum, especially the corpus dentatum, into communication 
with the medulla oblongata, nor that set of fibres which we 
were accustomed to call converging. It is true I did not 
do so in the second demonstration, but I have done it in 
other towns as well as in Edinburgh, to a great number of 
professional gentlemen ; and I offer to show the fact to any 
one who shall procure a fresh brain. For the second demon- 
stration, I trust, I was sufficiently patient with such mecha- 
nical dissectors, who tried my temper for nearly five hours 
in beginning their attacks with a moral question, and quib- 
bling about mere words, such as continuation, fibres, diverg- 
ing direction, the existence or non-existence of brown mat- 
ter, and other mechanical definitions ; about expressions 
which they had partly used in their own works, and which 



35 

they now maintain to have been known 150 years ago. 
ing that I had not shown every thing in one demon- 
stration, it is easily understood, that this mmfl be the case, 
as it is qui: - ; i the range of 

demonstration in one brain, particularly If it is turned about 
and frequently exposed to two hundred spectators. Did I 
not offer to the mechanical Dissector to lon- 

stration whenever lie might feel inclined, and opportunity 
occurred? Why has he then rather a\ nee 

i contrived to promote mutual informal ; W :<y, like 
rest of the opposition, does lie not make himself ac- 
i with the real meaning of our ii Why 

does he turn away 1. from the facts which I submit to 

I nth all other snatoi 

gre\ the int< 

corj latum. As t UJCe I8 generally known, 

(1 in tht \ ' Be 

it k t the corpus dent -itum, u! 

I in theli 

it of the diverging fibres 
of t <!oes not contain on< 

/ The i ves use of tk 

hitherto was use< ith cor- 

pus denlatum, hut he means bj ression the nucl 

of the nucleus. 

T Historian had i ibout the corpus 

. ud he complains, that I did not listen to his 

! sometimes 

different from what they would haw iers 



36 

and language accorded with the usual rules of decorum and 
politeness. Our idea is, that the bundle which comes from 
the corpus restiforme, meets greyish substance, which is in 
proportion to the cerebellum. The form in which the brown 
matter appears, is secondary in our views. The corpus 
dentatum is modified as to size and form in every man. It 
also presents a modified configuration in each brain accord- 
ing to a vertical, oblique, horizontal, lateral or mesial sec- 
tion. In the plates of our large work, we have given five dif- 
ferent representations of five sections in different directions. 
We maintain, that the appearances are different, on account 
both of the sections in different directions and of five different 
brains. How then could the Historian compare his figure 
of the corpus dentatum with one of ours, while both cere- 
bella were different in size and form, and the corpora den- 
tata are not cut in the same direction ? The cerebellum of 
our plate was larger, that of his figure smaller : we have cut 
more towards the mesial line, he more externally. In 
addition to which, the interior of the corpus dentatum in 
our plate xii. and in its diminished copy in my book on 
Physiognomy, plate iii. fig. 2. contains more white matter 
than he has represented in the copy which he has taken 
from our plate. Is this whole proceeding consistent with 
candor ? 

SECTION IX. 

The next point to be considered is the pons or annular 
protuberance. Besides the transverse fibres belonging to the 
lateral parts of the cerebellum, it contains brown matter and 
longitudinal threads, viz. the continuation of the pyramidal, 
oval, and a part of the restiform bodies and new additions. 



37 

The conscientious Reviewer states, p. 265, ■ These 
infallible anatomists have also described the annular pro- 
tuberance as another large ganglion, containing much 
brown matter. This too is incorrect ; it is composed chiefly, 
if nor entirely, of white substance.' The mechanical Dis- 
sector says, p. 140, 'The nervous matter of this protu- 
bhiefljT, if not entirely, of the while kind ; the 
quantity of the brown, I believe, will be found exceedingly 
■ill.' The 1! i affirms, \ that ' the annular 

pro: id of co: I large quantity of - 

matter, . to contain any of this matter at 

all.' 

It is easy to shew the brown color to every one who has 

! itious sub- 
re in the pons. W I the 
brain, and in I !i also, >ther spectator has 
olors, a brown and awhile, i:i the pons; 
\ : >ar era mot see it. Does 
he not ; > be consistent with the lit- 
•spel? But how will he reconcile such a state of 
nth Ins confident I A Historian 
he says, p. 14, % Thai Ifforgagni j%uily ttylcd Raymond 
\ . u MmspeUemii jteadewUd deeua and 
he himself, p. ^J, calls Vieussens an * a 1 bat 
Vieussens has seen and described cineritious s> in 
! can only account for his inability to find brown 
<tance in the po: is macerating small ; of 
:i in alcohol or acids. In that way the brown color 
may disappear. He therefore will do well to examine a 



38 

fresh brain. If be then cannot see it, he must find his con- 
solation in other persons who cannot distinguish colors. 

The Historian complains, p. 63, that I hesitated to define 
the boundaries of the corpora pyramidalia. The spectators 
will recollect that I have answered twice, that we call pyra- 
mids what all anatomists call so ; that we disapprove of this 
mechanical name, but make use of it to be understood ; 
that the essential point in our views is the connexion of the 
cerebral parts with the rest of the nervous system, viz. that 
in each hemisphere only a part is connected with the oppo- 
site side. The spectators will recollect also, that when the 
Dissector repeated his demand, I repeated the former ideas, 
made them a longitudinal incision through the pons, and 
went round to show that mass, in the figure which the His- 
torian has copied from our plate, f, bounded by n-o, which 
he describes, p. 210, as the line of separation between the 
posterior set of the diverging fibres and the anterior set, f, 
or those proceeding from the corpus pyramid ale. The me- 
chanical Dissector was not yet satisfied, but desired me 
again to mark the boundaries of the pyramids. To procure 
quiet, I marked them on the bit which was cut transversely, 
at the lower edge of the pons. The Historian says, p. 64, 
that I marked c from the forepart of the medulla oblongata 
to the fourth ventricle :' I do not believe it, since I went 
round among the spectators, and did not shew the mass 
from the anterior surface to the fourth ventricle, but only 
backward to the marked line n-o ; and since I spoke dis- 
tinctly of a posterior set of fibres which do not decussate. 
Why did the mechanical Dissector not correct me at the 
moment, as he was so anxious to oppose ? In short, the 



39 

description which I save in the second demonstration, and 
what I have shewn to the spectators, and all onr works, 
and all other de; :ions which I h;.\ i in Edin- 

burgh, and even wh . p. 210, from our de- 

scription, prove that we are better acquainted with the struc- 
ture of this part. 

The Historian, after a painful research, proves, that the 
connexion of the medul! with the crura cerebri 

was koown to many an;. ! 

d escripti on of ihi 

in the memoir to lli 1'. I tute, we say, p. 1 

• Pour Mm passage, connu dt la plupart des a 

tomists, on fait une incision,' &r : we believe only t«> li 
giv< ter desci to the 

idi- 
tions, whicli the 1 1 . in does not yet admit, ; lie 

says, p. 3 which u far jrom 

annular 
hey 
connected with the I ;ebri, it i 

urate to des< I the pyramidal 

bodies, and M of fibres I 

than it would be to say that they descend from the crura 
that pirt of them are prolonged to the corpora 
pyi , while part of them are lost in the protuberance.' 

V physical appearance, uhich we 

ha\ bed ami I, has sot: 

re mechanic*] Dissector. Besides, I 
describe th< ur of nerves and others from the medulla 

oblongata, rather to the tongue and organs of mastication, 



40 

than from these apparatus to the medulla oblongata ; and as 
in the lower animals nerves exist without brain, and in many 
quadrupeds a large spinal cord and small brains, we think 
we can describe the cerebral parts, added to the nervous 
mass, more properly as beginning with the medulla oblon- 
gata. But in the year 1815, when the Dissector wrote 
professedly on the brain, he did not know this passage of 
the pyramids though the pons ; or if he knew it, why did he 
terminate the brain proper at the upper edge of the pons, 
ascribe the mass of the pons to the cerebellum, and the 
medulla oblongata to the spinal cord ? 

section x. 

One of the most important points in our anatomical in- 
quiries concerns the two orders of fibres, viz. diverging and 
converging, or uniting. 

The conscientious Reviewer very modestly decided on 
this point, stating, p. 261, ; Such is the grand system of 
the diverging and converging fibres of the brain, of which 
Drs. Gall and Spurzheim are the sole inventors and pro- 
prietors ; a discovery truly, which, at some future time, 
may throw light on the most obscure operations of the 
microcosm. In the meanwhile it is our painful duty to re- 
mark, that the system is a complete fiction from beginning to 
end. The incorrectness, too, of these gentlemen, on this 
occasion, admits of no explanation or apology on the score of 
ignorance : their unceasing professions of the time and la- 
bor they have bestowed on the dissection of the brain, 
entirely preclude this excuse ; we must ascribe their inac- 
curacies solely to intention. It is a wilful misrepresentation 



41 

in them, therefore, to affirm, that in portions of the brain, 
h are composed purely of white nervous matter, (this 
phraseology is an invention of the R .) either 

ing or c can be show ethod tl 

have dcscrilc L 1 j have represented such | is 

I ous plates of the folio en 
confidently afiirm, tliat no I they b 

thought proper to represent between them, able of 

bei; nstrated in the human b nipula- 

tions which our authors all along profess to practise. ' 1 1 

1 Kssector has not a* 
orders of fibres. T II : >rian, ho 

our ideas are not !. Hut we 

pos md in t: - of 

1 that, as the 001 Eld" 

says, we are the sole proprietors. All that h 
I by our predecesso it the external part of 

crura a: i mmcc 

V 

inu with t!: ilia obl<> Reil (to 

whom the learned H rtaa will not do the injustice to 

lfl and Spurzlx .ed 

from hirn their views with 9*) 

here, only with re>, his 

essay published in Gren's Journal for IT :•"». The docrip- 

rtan himself, p. 9S, is 
licable only to the same parts which Yieusscns had 
shown, and whi< \\ ro and Vic(j I attem; 

to represent. The passage does not leave the least doubt 
5 



42 

It is, i Each crus, being embraced by the optic nerve, spreads 
out like an unfolded fan, almost horizontally, below the 
o-reat cavity of the brain, towards the inferior and lateral 
parts, and towards the extremities of the brain.*' There 
is no mention made of the two orders of fibres diverging 
and converging, none of the two sets of the diverging fibres, 
not even of the diverging bundles in ihe great cavities of 
the brain. After having spoken of the convolutions, I will 
show, whether Reil, on whom the Historian bestows so 
much praise, can be considered as entitled to original claims 
in the two essays inserted in his Archives of Physiology for 
1809 and 1812. At all events, the literary gospel, and 
Anatomist par excellence, when he wrote his book, were 
not acquainted with that structure. Even now the Histori- 
an denies evident appearances in the crura and their lateral 
distributions. He says, p. 103, 'The crura cerebri, ac- 
cording to Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, contain throughout 
their whole length a great quantity of grey substance, by 
which they are continually reinforced with new fibres ; 
whereas the quantity of this substance mingled with them 
is just perceptible, and no more, and the reinforcement of 
fibres from it is a mere averment, for which there is no 
foundation. Nor are there better grounds for the statement, 
that they receive a still greater increase just where they are 
embraced by the optic nerve ; neither their greatest increase 



* Jeder Schenkel breitet sich alsdann, nachdem ihn der Sehnerve um- 
fasst hat, als ein entfalteter Faecher fast wagerecht under der groasen 
Hirnhoehle gegen die unteren Flaechen, Seitentheile und gea-en die Ex- 
tremitaeten des grossen Gehirns aus. Gre?i's Journal, I. p. 102. 



43 

of all, nor the means by which, according to their own 
principles, it must be accom ible of de- 

monstration/ 

mechanical Dissector will I I 

.1 I in demonstrate ill these 

statements to be facts to an;. tire a lV 

brain. 

refers, p. 1« ' nion, in 

dcscript Q of 

m with the 
cm ittble magnitude : fan 

iass of fibres which rati m into 

lobe, is fully as great as that extending iier 

parts ol the hemispheres, if not greater.' It seem< ; 

a the passage, p. fl 
• The second set are dietribul 
volutions of the pose 1 those whl- tu- 

tted along the who! in of each 

the m< : and their description O 

of the A \, from 30 — .: .;/ IV_ 

ers, that 
pendix, that 4 it will enable them to ; not 

. on all > rncth/ interpret ling 

of t riptions which an- t I of hi 

from the dix. § 

30. 11 nous reste a par!- -terieur 

s au boi ieur de cbl 

h m iu. $ .)! . 

1 des cot lais- 

ceaux posterieurs montent, comme les faisceaux des pyra- 



44 

mides, entre les fibres transversales de la commissure du 
cervelet. Dans ce trajet, ils acquierenet un renforcement 
qui est bien moins considerable que celui des pyramides, et 
ils forment la partie posterieure et interieure des grands 
faisceaux fibreux (des cuisses) du cerveau.' (Thus, we 
are arrived at the crura.J ' Ici ils acquierent leur plus 
grand accroisement par la masse epaisse de substance grise 
qui s'y trouve, et qui avec les filets nerveux qu'elle produit, 
form un ganglion assez dur. applati au milieu et inegal en 
haut et posterieurement. § 32. Ce ganglion a jusqu' a 
present, ete connu sous le nom de couches optiques; mais 
fjne couche nerveuse du nerf visuel est seulement attachue 
a la surface posterieure externe de ce ganglion. D'abord 
ce ganglion n'est nullement en raison directe avec le nerf 
optique, mais il Test avec les convolutions qui portent de ce 
ganglion. Ensuite en examinant l'interieur de ce ganglion, 
on trouve une grande quantite de filets nerveux tres fins qui 
tous vont en montant, et dans une toute autre direction que 
le nerf optique. Ils se reunissent a leur sortie, au bord su- 
perieur du ganglion, en faisceaux divergens. Les anteri- 
eurs de ces faisceaux traversent un grand amas du substance 
grise, et prennant un nouvel accroirement de cet amas, de 
sorte qu'ils suffident pour former les circonvolutions poster- 
ieures, et toutes celles qui sont situees au bord superieur 
de chaque hemisphere vers la ligne mediane du cer- 
veau.' 

Now, if the posterior internal part of the crura enters 
into the optic thalami, and these form the posterior lobe, I 
ask every intelligent reader, < whether our description ex- 
cludes the posterior lobe of the brain-proper altogether from 



45 

any connexion with the crura ?' or whether the int. 
tion of H error of unaccountable 

I d conceive, thru an anonymous 1 1 

ttion of con hat 

seems Billable to his purpose : but it pom my cooceptioo, 

: i II 1 itlcmen 

m passec! silence the num nts 

of v. from lb 

I of the crura into tl 

ml art* | irelv lo 

I these : .••sent anotli 

of a 

I ily answer, that in our plat- v. vi. ami Kill m 
resentedthe numerous ofwbit< 

H . • shoot out li 

is of ihe 
outer, hiilb< orpora s* 

!e large ; 
■ 

phlet, 

111,!' tion I I: 

spectators 4 a m >r close 

I 
1 purpoei one beocfa em 

In ! I mj I took m >re- 

strations, and that, I 
5* 



46 

rupted, I continued, for near five hours, to go round and 
between the benches. 

This accusation affords me the opportunity of amusing 
the reader with an anecdote, which will show the zeal of 
our antagonists in promoting anatomical knowledge. A 
girl with chronic hydrocephalus and a considerable exten- 
sion of the head, had died in the clinical ward in the Infirm- 
ary of Edinburgh. A friend of mine was so kind as to 
inform me that the dissection was to be made at half past 
twelve o'clock, the 28th of December, 1816. As this is 
one of the cardinal points of our anatomical inquiries, and 
one that has been the most determinated opposed by the 
Edinburgh Review, I placed myself, as might be supposed, 
among the spectators. 

Without informing the spectators what was to be done, the 
dissectors set to work. They employed more than suffi- 
cient time to take off the scull-cap ; but the spectators, ex- 
cusing the anxiety of tha operators not to spoil their impor- 
tant work, remained quiet. The scull-cap, when taken off, 
was handed round : — Meanwhile the dura mater was re- 
moved, and every spectator, I suppose, expected to see 
the appearances exhibited, or at least to hear them 
mentioned ; but no such thing. The dissectors in the 
area surrounded the body, put their heads together, so that 
no one could see what was going on, except themselves. 
The pupils expressed their disapprobation by hisses. This 
induced the great dissector to promise that the particulars 
should be made known. The water was taken out of the 
ventricles, the cavities were laid open, and the cerebral 
parts divided into pieces, which at least ou°;ht to have been 



47 

handed round. In vain the spectators repeatedly hissed. 

The dissectors in the area continued to ier 

round the hydrocephalus, and proc. .lently with the 

>n. A gentleman in the ar , to 

at least ad But be 1 DEtf of 

not time lor 

in the o; 
Th< acood A will 

il his cavilling could not ind 
lect hirn in any drittg. i 

l red thai l 

brain had not been absorbed, but that tl 
shallow and So much for I 

agen< -orbing vessels ! 

I h rious 

cou I 

lie dissc>< '. ith leM ga and leal 

lie pupil ! ita! for 

P 

. that th 

i it. To I KB 1 jivr my particular thai ind 

1 re 
more his in 

! i convinced thru old 

I te, that : 

>f the other gentlen 

~e from 

FJ ipabk of 

*o, / / / 

sector to dc; 



48 

The Historian also avers, p. 117, that his figure of the 
corpus olivare is after nature, and ours imaginary. He 
cannot have dissected the corpus olivare very often, because 
he has not yet learned that it varies, like the corpus denta- 
tum, in size and form, in different individuals, and that the 
form appears different according to the section. His is 
horizontal, and ours vertical ; hence the appearances must 
be different. 

There is still a singular accusation : I am happy that 
there were so many present who will recollect what hap- 
pened. Pages 28 and 112, the Historian states, that I 
denied assertions contained in our works. This, however, 
I have never done. The first passage of my book was 
read, when the Dissector intimated, that we maintain, that 
all the fibres of the crura originate from the medulla oblon- 
gata. He then read, p. 36—37, ' I shall now examine 
the organization of the brain. Immediately before their 
entrance into the pons Varolii, the pyramids are slightly con- 
tracted, but as soon as they enter this mass, they are divided 
into many bundles, which spring out of the large mass of grey 
substance contained in the pons Varolii. These longitudinal 
bundles are covered by a thick layer of transverse cords, 
which comes from the cerebellum, and which I shall describe 
hereafter. Some longitudinal bundles are disposed in lay- 
ers, and others are interwoven with transverse cords. They 
ascend, and are successively enlarged, so as to form at 
their exit forward and outward, at least two-thirds of the 
crura cerebri. Thus, the anterior and external bundles of 
the crura cerebri are the continuation and gradual comple- 
tion of the primitive pyramidal bundles.' 



49 

Immediately after the second demonstration, I caused an 
anatomical prospectus to be printed to | all cavilling 

^estions. There, p. 7. I mentioned this peculiar opin- 
ion, and ask, l Was anxious to defend the Edinburgh 
Re\ cane, at the same time, he i on another 

-zestion, which he could bai 

- of the Edinbui ible 

to state, that all the (!. fibres take their origin, it 

seems, in the brown ,!la oblongata?' 

W ban the passage of my book I . 1 publicly de- 

till maintain f ns with 

to tl ssive reinfoi Thus. I I not what 

iook, but on: . that all the diverg- 

ing fibres of the brain take their origin ill the brown mat- 
ter of (he medulla ob 

passage wa< ! the 

icture of the | part of the corpu m, and 

when the Dissector protests ie fibre ; v.: 

that the brown inn: the 

while, and that the fori fibrous 

Then be read p 1, of my bo 

1 speak of the fibrous structure of the whit' ice. 

upon the idea of the Edinburgh 15- p. 

. *W( inspect that when our I iitXM of 

demonstrating to their less knowing pupils, that the wl. 
matter : ome portion of the brain, 

where, in consequence of the alternations of the two kin 
of matter, the whii is through the 

brown. Our readers will perceive, however, that this is 
quite a different species of fibrousness from that of either 



50 

kind of matter taken by itself. 5 We maintain, that the 
white is fibrous whether it is intermixed with brown or not. 
But how could the Historian relate, p. 112, that ' I denied 
to have ever affirmed, that the white substance, apart from 
the grey, exhibited a fibrous structure. 5 Is not the whole 
order of our converging fibres entirely white ? A great 
number of auditors, not only in Edinburgh, but wherever I 
have demonstrated the brain, will recollect, that I have 
shown the fibrous structure of the corpus callosum. It 
seems the Dissector is accustomed to contradict, and under 
whatever form he appears, likes to follow his natural incli- 
nation. 

I leave to those who have seen the demonstration of the 
brain, to judge whether or not the following remarks of the 
Historian are correct. Page 134, he says, l that under the 
denomination of diverging and converging fibres, we have 
described and represented as demonstrable, and even gone 
so far as to delineate in our engravings, parts which have no 
existence in this organ ; and that we have maintained con- 
nexions to subsist betwixt all these parts for which there is 
no foundation in nature, and which they are under the ne- 
cessity of denying when called upon to display in their pub- 
lic dissections. 5 I, however, have more than once, even in 
Edinburgh, been told, that in nature the appearance of 
diverging and converging fibres is more distinctly seen than 
in our plates. As the Anatomist par excellence in many 
respects differs from other anatomists and physiologists, I 
may suppose that his eyes are of a peculiar conformation. 



51 



SECTION \I. 



The last point of our anatomical considerations cone* 
the structure of the convolutions. W to 

teach, that they can be unfolded or distended into two 1 
ers or fibres. 

The lit- • \W affirm it as (be 

result of j of 

cin es, that there is no foundation whah the 

supposition, (for sup|>ositioii .) that f; >lu- 

tions consist of two 1 in the midd 

Tli- I I tor pass* :ia- 

it The H iti- 

i the c< L and though h» ms- 

passage I !ul- 

larv lamina in the middle of the poorolatii the 

M . Wi'idun- 

gen :) maintains, how- 

be u 

urious is the w« i-lit be lays on our not h 
ablt nrflema be- 

:iaik particularly characler- 
I mechanical Dissector. Wo maintain, that the con- 
volutions can be m rated in the middle line, 
and unfolded into two layers ; he, from mere fondness of 
contradiction, does not r lie non-existence of the 
fine nevrilema is in our f cause the separation will 



52 

be still more easy. I will give a few details that the reader 
may the better understand this point. 

When we submitted our memoir to the French Institute, 
the commissioners related, that we consider each convolu- 
tion 'comme une espece de petite bourse ou de canal,' he. 
We replied, that this is not our meaning, but that we admit 
1 une adherence de contiguite entretenue peut-etre par du 
tissu cellulaire, mais non une adherence de continuity par 
confusion de substance ; une adherence dans le sens d'ag- 
glutination (Anklebung) mais non dans le sens de concre- 
tion (Verwachsung).' Memoire, p. 200. 

I never speak of this fine nevrilema, and have not done 
so in any demonstration in Edinburgh ; its existence is 
quite a secondary consideration, the possibility of separating 
the convolutions into two layers is the leading point. How 
then could the pamphleteer represent it as the most impor- 
tant matter, and repeat five times, that, if we can unfold 
the convolutions, we cannot show the very fine cellular tis- 
sue ? The mechanical Dissector may amuse himself with 
its discovery and demonstration ; our great pathological 
point is ascertained, viz. the unfolding of the brain in large 
hydrocephalic heads. 

As nothing is more easily demonstrated in every brain, 
than the separation of each convolution into two layers, 
I will not lose time in detailing unmeaning and secondary 
protestations. I only mention, that the Historian confounds 
the bottom with the top of the convolutions. It seems, how- 
ever, very natural to understand what part of the convolu- 
tions we call bottom ; because we begin the demonstration 



63 

of the brain with the medulla oblongata, and consider the 
successive reinforcement from below upwards. Now it 
seems natural, that we come first to the bottom of the con- 
volutions, then to their top. It should be the more di 
cult to misunderstand our meaning, that we always in our 
demonstrations (and I ! ie 80 in Edinburgh) repeat, 

that the bottom of the convolutions corresponds to the ceil- 
of the ventricles, particularly to that spot where the 

re of the convolutiu 
with the i nee of large bydroc 

not absorbed, hut e. by the 

T principal changes 
tak« :n the corpus calloMim, ndices, ami the 

COi: I COrpUfl callosui; 

f the bead, the fabc is 

elo: >ns sometimes quite distended like 

a thin membrane of cer ice, from within white 

with horizontal fibres, and l 

wit:, QOt 

. but also vital and susceptih >ns, 

on account of the continual decomposition and new COmpo- 

. lace in the organisation At 

all vcr annihilated while the mind 

inues to ma 

The literar>- go- • s, p. 2GJ, that our conjectures 

about hydrocephaly [Ulte of a piece with our 

oth- ifef ; hence, trash, a compl» m irom 

beginning to end, trumpery, quackery. The objections of 

the conscientio rave the appearance of reasoning; I 



54 

will therefore answer them as I have done in my Anatomi- 
cal Prospectus. 

1. c Pressing against the convolutions, we presume, 
would equally succeed, if the brain were made of putty, or 
tallow, or soft wax.' The Historian speaks the same lan- 
guage. 

Ans. This is by no means the case : a convolution can 
be extended only to the double of its vertical depth, and 
during that proceeding it shows an internal groove. 
• 2. ' It is not conceivable, that the secreting vessels should 
pour out the serous fluid with a force sufficient to account 
for the distending power in this case.' 

Ans. This view is too mechanical ; has been invented 
by the conscientious Reviewer, and is now supported by 
the Historian, p. 158. I say in my Prospectus, s Two 
things must be considered, — a vital process, and an exten- 
sion by pressure.' The skull, dura mater, and falx, cannot 
be extended by mechanical force alone, any more than the 
orbit by a carcinomatous eyeball. This happens by a con- 
tinual change of matter, during which, according to a gen- 
eral law of nature, the parts which contain, in their new 
composition, are deposited according to the circumference 
of the contents. Moreover, the hydrocephalic heads are 
not formed suddenly, and a slight successive pressure would 
separate parts which a sudden pressure would destroy. 
Finally, in the distension of any part by dropsy, he. such 
as of the eye or skin, we can never account for it by the 
force with which the secreting vessels pour out the serous 
fluid. It is the more astonishing that the Reviewer has 
imagined such a power, and the Historian continues to 



55 

speak of it, while the third remark refutes their inept sup- 
positions. 

3. ■ It is the very height of improbability, that any such 
distending power as is here maintained' (suggested by the 
Reviewer) 'should not produce insensibility, or even death 
in the individual, the instant it began to operate.' The 
Historian, p. 158, expresses the same idea, ' that no indi- 
vidual could survive the operation of such a pressure on this 
organ beyond a few minutes.' 

Ans. The invention of such a distending power of the 
secreting vessels shows the mechanical tendency of this 
changeable person. 

4. ■ It is quite incompatible with the physical properties 
of the cerebral matter, so far as they are yet known to us, 
to imagine, that the parts immediately forming the sides of 
the ventricles can admit of a degree of extension such as 
this theory supposes, without great and obvious lacera- 
tion.' 

Ans. Because it was not known, we looked for an ex- 
planation. An extension of the brain takes place, the ven- 
tricles are enlarged by the accumulation of water, the con- 
volutions disappear proportionately, the vertical fibres of the 
convolutions become horizontal, the internal surface remains 
white, and the external brown. These are facts to be seen 
in every hydrocephalic head ; but nothing can explain 
them better than the gradual separation of the convolutions 
from within into two layers. 

5. 'If there be merely a stretching and unfolding of parts 
in large hydrocephali, as much cerebral matter, surely, 
ought to be found distributed through the sides of extended 






56 

as of the unextended cavities, though somewhat differently 
disposed ; and yet, we believe, there never was an instance 
of a large hydrocephalus, in which, upon attentive exami- 
nation, a greater or less deficiency of cerebral matter was 
not exceedingly obvious.' 

Ans. So he may say, who has never opened a hydro- 
cephalic head, or, at least, not with the attention which 
the Reviewer recommends. We have opened such heads, 
and rely on it, that accurate anatomists in future will find 
as much cerebral mass in the extended as is commonly 
found in the unextended state. It rather appears to me 
extraordinary, that the parts which undergo the changes 
are sufficient to form the envelope which contains the 
water. 

6. c With respect to the argument deduced from the ob- 
servation, that persons with hydrocephalus often retain their 
intellectual faculties, is so manifest a petitio principii, as not 
to require pointing out.' 

Ans. This is certainly no proof for him, who is not aware 
of the importance of the brain, who considers its physiology 
as useless to the medical profession ; or for a Reviewer 
who thinks, that his limbs are fit for voluntary motion with- 
out a spinal cord. After his assertion, that ' numerous une- 
quivocal instances are on record, and are even occurring 
every day, in which large portions of the brain, nay, almost 
the whole, if not actually the whole of this organ, have been 
completely destroyed by the progress of this very affection ; 
as he holds this to be a fact just as certain as that there are 
many persons now alive whose legs have been removed by 
the knife of the surgeon,' it ought not to be difficult for him 



57 

to show every day such facts to accurate anatomists. If he 
can ascertain only one fact, that a hydrocephalic head has 
continued to manifest the operations of the mind, while the 
whole brain was completely destroyed and absorbed, I will 
abandon my investigations into the structure and functions 
of that organ, and will be satisfied with ignorance. But as 
long as such a fact is not shewn, I continue to maintain, that 
the mind cannot manifest its powers without brain, any 
more than a limb which has been removed by the knife 
of the surgeon can exercise voluntary motion. 

The Reviewer then concludes his sapient remarks on 
hydrocephalus, ' We have only to add, that we have always 
been accustomed to consider the changes produced on the 
cerebral mass in every degree of hydrocephalus, as the 
effect of an increased and peculiarly regulated absorption ; 
and that we never dreamt of any other agent being concern- 
ed in the process, or ever heard of any other explanation of 
the phenomena being suggested by persons whose opinions 
have the least weight in physiological matters.' 

Ant. This is dogmatism in all its glory. In the same 
manner the whole of modern chemistry might be spurned 
at, because formerly phlogiston was considered as suffi- 
cient to explain the phenomena; and all persons, whose 
opinions had the least weight in chemistry, were satisfied 
with this explanation. 

We have hitherto seen, that in general the Historian 
had very little regard for the literary gospel. Not once 
has he quoted it ; on the contrary, he has always proved 
by quotations from excellent anatomists, that the propo- 
sitions which the conscientious man denies in the most 
6* 



58 

positive, and not always in the most polite expressions, have 
been known for centuries. With respect to the existence 
of brain in hydrocephalic heads, the Historian places the 
critical Reviewer in a singular situation, and stops him short, 
bv proving that the brain exists, and that Vesalius, Tulpius, 
Petit, and Morgagni have known it to exist. I now call 
the attention of the reader to my book on Physiognomy, 
which it was the duty of the conscientious man to review, 
instead of asserting what suited his purpose. In this very 
book he will find the same authors quoted whom the His- 
torian mentions. I even flatter myself, that I have given 
the history of hydrocephalic heads more complete than the 
Historian himself. Therefore his conscientiousness forsook 
him, when he neglected my quotations. The Reviewer and 
Historian may settle the dispute ; we meanwhile continue to 
maintain our first proposition, that in large hydrocephalic 
heads the brain always exists. 

The Historian speaks of three sorts of large hydroce- 
phalic heads ; first, p. 149, of those, as we have describ- 
ed, where the brain begins to increase in its external 
dimensions, and the convolutions become shorter and 
shorter, and at last disappear. ' In other instances,' says 
he, p. 151, ' if the patient does not sink before such exten- 
sive changes are accomplished, even the thin remaining 
layer of white and brown substance forming the vault and 
sides of the ventricles, gradually disappears, and with this, 
at last, portions more or less extensive of the parts of the 
brain situated towards the basis.' We deny any existence 
of this sort. The thin layer or membrane of the brain 
never entirely disappears. Morgagni, long ago, has proved 



59 

how it comes that superficial and inaccurate dissectors have 
formed such an erroneous opinion ; and the Historian might 
have rectified his error, if he had paid due attention to the 
details related by Morgagni. (Epist. xii. de vuln. capitis.) 

Of the third sort, the Pamphleteer speaks as follows: 
■ Sometimes it would appear that the brain may be very 
greatly enlarged in consequence of effusion into the ven- 
tricles, and yet the convolutions not be at all affected. Such 
a case occurred to Reil ; and he mentions expressly that 
the extension was confined entirely to the ventricles, and 
that all the convolutions were solid, and not split up, 
(gespahen).' 

We have seen such cases, and maintain, that the convo- 
lutions never appear split up, and cannot appear so on 
account of the tissue formed by the diverging and converg- 
ing fibres at the bottom of the convolutions. The convo- 
lutions, wherever, and with whatever depth or height they 
appear, are solid ; they only become shallower by degrees ; 
and the vertical fibres are extended into a horizontal po- 
sition. The hydrocephalic head of which Cuvier speaks in 
the report on our Memoir, we had shown to him in Paris ; 
the convolutions were thinned, and partly effaced, but, as 
far as they existed, preserved their internal solidity, as is the 
case in every other brain. 

Thus we admit only one sort of large hydrocephalic 
heads. The brain is always present. The cavities are 
distended, the convolutions more or less disappear, and 
proportionately become shallower ; their vertical fibres 
become horizontal, and sometimes these parts lose their 
convoluted form, though the substance of the brain suffers 
no diminution. 



60 



SECTION XII. 



The most grave accusation, and which, if true, were in- 
deed formidable, remains to be repelled. At the end the 
Historian positively states, p. 187, that Reil has been de- 
frauded ; and in p. 99, that Reil has the sole merit of hav- 
ing revived the investigation of the fibrous structure of the 
brain in modern times ; that he is the original discoverer 
of our ideas, and that we have borrowed them from his 
writings. 

How will the conscientious Reviewer here extricate him- 
self ? Why did he deny such things as we maintain in our 
works, since his Historian asserts that Reil has discovered 
them, and refers to his Archives of Physiology for the year 
1809 and 1812? The Dissector himself, in writing his 
book on the brain, forgot these essays of Reil. But why 
have we not acknowledged that we owe our anatomical in- 
formation of the brain to the writings of Reil ? The reason 
is simple ; viz. because it is not the case. The proof of 
this assertion is equally simple : I have only to state the 
history of our investigations. 

While at Vienna, we spoke of the great leading points 
of our anatomical demonstrations ; viz. of the aggregation 
of various cerebral parts, and their connexion with the med- 
ulla oblongata ; of the proportion between the grey and white 
substance ; of the diverging and converging fibres ; and of 
unfolding the convolutions. 

In the year 1805, the 6th of March, we left Vienna for 
Berlin, where we repeated our anatomical demonstrations 
n presence of the medical Professors, and numerous audi- 



61 

tors. Outlines of our anatomical and physiological propo- 
sitions were published, during that spring, by Prof. Bishoff. 
From Berlin we went to Potsdam, then to Leipzig, where 
Dr. Knoblaach published an account of our doctrines on 
the brain. Then the usual demonstrations and lectures 
were delivered in Dresden, and Mr. Bloede published out- 
lines of our anatomical and physiological views. From 
Dresden we went to Halle, where Prof. Reiland Loder, and 
numerous gentlemen of the profession, honored us with their 
presence at the public lectures and demonstrations. With 
Loder w T e repeated several times the anatomical demonstra- 
tions, and once we dissected with Reil a brain quietly in his 
own room. He was so much pleased with our demonstra- 
tions, that he gave to Dr. Gall some drawings with which 
he was formerly occupied, de structure nervorum ct cere- 
belli. Thus, I beg to observe, that in the summer of 1805 
we demonstrated to Reil the same leading points in the 
anatomy of the brain, which we still maintain. We then 
continued to lecture and to demonstrate the brain, that very 
same year, in Weimar, Jena, Geottingen, Brownschweig, 
Hamburgh, Kiel, and Copenhagen. 

In the year 1806, anatomical demonstrations were made 
in Bremen, Munster in Westphalia, Amsterdam, Leyden, 
Frankfort upon the Maine, Manheim, Stuttgard and Friburg 
in Brisgaw. In the year ISO/, we went to Marburgh, 
Wurtzburgh, Munich, (where we had the pleasure of con- 
versing with Soemmerring,) Augsburgh, Ulm, Zurich, Bern, 
Bale ; and in the autumn of the same year to Paris, where 
we dissected the brain, first in presence of Cuvier, Four- 
croy, Geoffroi de St. Hilaire, Dumeril, Dr. Demangeon, 



62 

and others, and successively in many learned societies. 
Meanwhile numerous publications had appeared in Ger- 
many. Dr. Demangeon, who had attended the lectures 
in Hamburgh, published in Paris, 1806, his Physiologie 
Intellcctuelle, and mentioned our anatomical views. 

In March, 1808, we delivered our Memoir to the French 
Institute. The commissioners declare, at the beginning of 
their report, that they have hesitated a moment, whether 
they should examine our paper ; because there is a rule, 
1 de ne point emettre avis sur les ouvrages dejd soumis au 
grand tribunal du public par la voie de l'impression, et Ton 
pouvoit croire que la doctrine anatomique de Mr. Gall a 
regu, par l'enseignement oral que ce professeur en a fait 
dans les principals villes de l'Europe, et par les nombreux 
extraits que ses disciples en ont repandus, une publicite a 
peu-pres equivalente a celle d'une impression authentique.' 
They, however, add, that Gall had not given his sanction 
to any one of the publications, and that this circumstance 
was one of the motives which induced them to examine our 
memoir. 

After this, Reil published, in his archives, views essen- 
tially the same as ours, of the aggregation of cerebral parts, 
of diverging and converging fibres, and of the possibility of 
separating the convolutions in the middle line. He does 
not state, that he was the first who has conceived such gener- 
al ideas ; nor does he mention us as the inventors. He does 
not, and could not say, that we have learned them from 
him ; he merely describes and represents them in engrav- 
ings. As we had been in almost every remarkable town, 
and at all the universities in Germany, our countrymen 



63 

knew how to estimate the proceeding of Reil ; and it is only 
the great publicity of our demonstrations, that can excuse 
Reil for not mentioning them. 

It is true, Reil has chosen other names : he calls our ap- 
paratus of formation HirnschenJcel system, and our apparatus 
of union Balken system ; our diverging bundles are his Stab- 
kranz. We speak simply of fibres, he of various convexi- 
ties, obtuse and acute angles of the fibres, of laminae, fossae, 
and radii of the white substance ; of wings, mountains, 
lobules, teeth, of a comb, and of similar mechanical 
denominations. These minute descriptions of mechanical 
forms, and such names, may appear interesting to a me- 
chanical Dissector, who is attentive to every little cul-de- 
sac, and declares the anatomy of the brain unnecessary to 
physiological and pathological views. We, on the contrary, 
think that there would be no end of such mechanical de- 
tails in comparative anatomy. If, for instance, in the gra- 
dation of animals, every new additional part in the cerebel- 
lum is to be named, who will learn all the names? and of 
what use will such a study be? We therefore point out 
the structure of each part, well aware, however, that each 
part is modified in the individuals of different species, nay, 
in the different individuals of the same species. 

This short account is sufficient to prove, that there is no 
occasion whatever for us to apologize in the least, with res- 
pect to the publications of Reil. A few years ago the His- 
torian might have been easily pardoned for his ignorance of 
historical details ; but in the present situation, what his mer- 
its are, let others decide. 

The learned Historian insinuates, that Reil and Gall had 



64 

ed, that the former was to examine the cerebellum, and 
the latter the brain-proper. But I affirm, that nothing of 
that kind happened, nor could happen, because our general 
views of the brain were discovered before we met Reil at 
Halle, in the year 1805. Reil, with such brains as he op- 
erated on, did not succeed by our method, and therefore 
thought it insufficient, and preferred maceration in alcohol 
or acids. His words are : c The brain is too pulpy and too 
deliquescent to be examined in connexion without prepara- 
tion.' He then made frequent use of laceration with the fin- 
gers, or of scraping. Thus, the essential difference between 
Reil's proceeding and ours is, that he prepares the brain 
artificially, while we prefer a good brain in its fresh state. 
With this narration I beg the reader to compare the follow- 
ing passage of the candid Historian, where he says, p. 188, 
1 Reil's expectations of assistance from Dr. Gall were alto- 
gether disappointed, so much so, that he seems not to have 
considered that person's investigations as worthy of atten- 
tion ; but pronouncing his method inadequate, extended his 
own inquiries to the department thus fruitlessly assigned to 
another.' This Historian and Critic is told by Reil, that 
he had tried our method and did not succeed, and hence 
concludes, that we have defrauded him. A finely contrived 
story ! ! ! 

The Pamphleteer, p. 9, finds it ' amusing to hear the 
committee of the French Institute occasionally named as 
supporters of our anatomical doctrines.' Cuvier, however, 
was too well acquainted with the German and European 
literature, to accuse us of plagiarism. He allowed that our 
method of dissecting the brain is preferable to that com- 



65 

monly used in the schools ; that we are the first who have 
shewn the swellings in the spinal cord of a calf; the propor- 
tion between the brown and white substance in the brain ; 
the true origin oi the optic and other nerves ; the certainty 
of the decussation ; the successive reinforcement through 
the pons, crura, optic thalami, and corpora striata ; the two 
sorts of fibres in the brain, and the generality of the com- 
missures. As the Report is printed, even translated and 
inserted in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal for 
January, 1S09, the reader, in perusing the Report, may 
satisfy himself. I also ask the Historian, why he has 
omitted to tell his readers, that Cuvier, in the Annual Re- 
port at the end of 1S0S, published, that our Memoir was 
by far the most important which had occupied the attention 
of the class ? 

SECTION XIII. 

Before I finish with the Historian, I have still to reply to 
his remarks on our Plates. He relates, p. 2, that he has 
compared our descriptions and engravings strictly with na- 
ture; and according to p. J G5, he has found, that in our 
plate iv. which represents the basis of the brain in a female, 
the medulla oblongata points directly backwards, instead of 
downwards ; and the anterior surface of the annular protu- 
berance downwards, instead of forwards ; and the anterior 
lobes are too broad, the surface neither concave nor 
sloping enough, the middle lobes too wide and not 
pointed enough, and the forms of the convolutions not nat- 
ural. 

Ans. Who has ever shown or seen a brain, in which, 

7 



66 

when taken out of the skull, deprived of dura mater, arid- 
placed on its upper surface, the parts of the basis remained 
in the same position as in the skull ? Do not the parts sink 
more or less, according to the firmness of the brain ? I beg 
the reader to compare with our plate that of Vicq d'Azyr, 
and see which is the better. I say, the basis represented 
by Vicq d'Azyr, looks like a soft, collapsed, and flat and 
deliquescent mass. Indeed, no philosophical mind will, 
and no mechanical Dissector ought to cavil, about minute 
changes in relative situation of the cerebral parts, when 
taken out of the head ; since these, like all other bodies, 
must follow the laws of gravity. I also maintain, that a 
Dissector who adopts one general measurement, and one 
general form for all brains and their parts ; who does not 
know that each lobe in every person, as to size and form, 
is modified, while each, even the minutest part of the brain, 
as well as of ears and noses, offers modifications, cannot have 
compared many brains. The important consideration, that 
each part is modified, is general, and applicable to the parts 
of every system. It has been well detailed by Dr. Barclay 
with respect to the blood vessels, in the preface of his Des- 
cription of the Arteries, and will be admitted with respect 
to the nervous system, by all those who compare the parts 
in different individuals. The anterior lobes, as they are 
represented in our plate iv. may be larger than those of the 
accurate Historian, but they are too small for those men to 
whom the medical school of Edinburgh is indebted for 
its first celebrity. I also assert, that the females of Ed- 
inburgh, who are known for their talents, have the anterior 
lobes of their brains larger than those which we have 
copied. 



67 

The remarks of the Historian on our fifth plate can be 
made only by one who is accustomed to cut the brain me- 
chanically, and who does not consider the parts in connexion, 
but thinks that all brains, and each part in every brain, are 
quite the same, without the least modification : I repeat, 
that we have represented nature, and do affirm, that the 
general structure of the brain, and its parts, will be found as 
our plates indicate ; but that the modifications of each part 
are infinite. Such a configuration, however, as the Historian 
has given of the pons, in his plate i. fig. 2. can only be seen 
in a putrid brain ; or if he gives it as the exact appearance 
of this part in a fresh brain, he must never have seen the 
real structure. 

As each part in each brain is modified, how can the Dis- 
sector maintain, that in plate vi. our representations are not 
natural ? The corpus dentatum, and the arborescent ap- 
pearance of the cerebellum, seem to him exceedingly incor- 
rect. The former is represented in five different brains 
and sections, and the latter is shown in seven different 
brains, partly in the same, partly in different sections ; and 
in each the appearance is modified, for no other reason but 
because it w r as so in nature. It was, indeed, more difficult 
to copy nature exactly, than to make the appearance always 
the same. I rely on the decision of every anatomist who 
has had opportunity of comparing brains. 

In the viiith, ixth, xth, xith, and xiith plates, the repre- 
sentations of the skull are particularly blamed, and declared 
fictitious or imaginary, so that they never could have been 
drawn from nature. In reply, I propose to the Dissector to 
open the head of a young man, of a very old person, and of 



68 

a third, who had long been maniacal, and he may then tell 
US, whether there is one and the same appearance in the 
bone. Those who will examine my collection, may con- 
vince themselves, that still greater varieties occur in nature 
than we have represented in our plates. 

In plate viii. he finds fault with the outline of the cranium, 
particularly towards the forepart of the basis ; he has never 
seen an occipital bone of such a form and of such dimen- 
sions ; such arrangements of lobes and lobules were never 
observed ; the cerebellum is even called a case of monstros- 
ity. Such assertions may be made by a Dissector who 
never has examined the differences of heads ; who thinks, 
that children of seven years have the full growth of their 
brains, (the contrary of which, however, any maker of hats 
might have told him), and that the brains of women and 
men in general do not show any constant difference. We 
maintain, that the anterior lobes, their bassilar convolutions, 
and the cerebella, vary as well as the other parts, and for 
that reason we have copied them different in size and form, 
as they occurred. 

Plate xvii. is said to be in contradiction to plate xii. The 
Dissector cannot easily conceive how they may be recon- 
ciled. The answer is, that each brain was different, and in 
the former the bundles w 7 ere larger, in the latter smaller, 
and in the latter the bundles are traced to a greater extent 
towards the convolutions. 

In short, he who has not yet observed, that the arrange- 
ments, size, and form of the different parts of the brain, pre- 
sent various modifications, instead of speaking of unnatural 
forms, fictitious appearances, too large or too small, too 



69 

wide or too narrow, too thick or too thin, too perpendicular 
or too horizontal, or similar representations, ought to learn 
to distinguish the generalities from the particularities, and 
that one brain is no more the standard of all brains, than the 
feelings and dispositions of one man are the standard of the 
whole race. 

The conscientious Reviewer complained, p. 154, that he 
was heartily tired of the mass of nonsense he had been obli- 
ged to wade through in my work. I only depend on the 
constant laws of nature. What has happened, will happen, 
and every one has the right to observe and to examine for 
himself. In anatomy, the eyes deserve more confidence 
than the ears, demonstration than fancy. 

I cannot finish this chapter without calling the attention 
of the reader to a comparison of the statement of the critical 
Reviewer, the mechanical Dissector, and Historian. To 
the latter I am under great obligation ; and I give him my 
public thanks for having entirely refuted the conscientious 
Reviewer, by proving that our anatomical views of the ner- 
vous system are not new, and, by detecting the ignorance of 
that empiric in criticism, has taught him, that not our asser- 
tions, but his, are ' mere nonsense, amazing absurdities, nay 
trumpery, and wilful mistatements.' The Historian also 
gives a lesson to the mechanical Dissector, and shows him 
how improper it is for any one not to quote preceding au- 
thors, when he writes professedly on a subject. Supported 
by the Historian, my labor has become easy. According 
to him, the teachers and practitioners in medicine of Edin- 
burgh do not know any thing about the anatomy of the brain, 
and not one has eyes to see, or even to distinguish brown 



70 

from white : vet he has not ventured to affirm this of all the 
medical men of Europe ; and as it is proved above that we 
have not borrowed any thing from Reil, we may continue 
to speak of our discoveries in the anatomy of the nervous 
system. 

There is another great literary tribunal which has con- 
descended to speak of our doctrines. These quarterly 
judges, however, do not display great anatomical knowledge. 
They confine themselves to mere general expressions, and 
are perfectly willing to give us praise in this respect ; to 
allow us every merit for our method of dissecting the brain ; 
for having shown that the nerves of the body have their ori- 
gin in the respective parts of it, and not in the brain ; and 
for having stated the morbid phenomena of hydrocephalus 
much more clearly than has been attempted heretofore. 
How merciful ! Indeed I am obliged to their kind judg- 
ment. But as the chief judges of these inferior courts 
are at variance, we appeal to the great tribunal of the 
public. 



CHAPTER II. 
PHYSIOLOGY. 



After several indirect attacks in the preceding numbers, 
the literary Oracle of Edinburgh, No. xlix. p. 227, spoke 
from his tripod, that 'the whole of our doctrines is a piece 
of thorough quackery from beginning to end. ? The Quar- 
terly Reviewer (No. xxv. p. 159.) had so little power of 



71 

discrimination, that he confounded my person with all ray 
countrymen, and accounted for my conduct by my being a 
German and not an Englishman. I know, however, that he 
does not possess the characteristic qualities of an English- 
man ; and the incongruous thoughts of the Edinburgh Re- 
viewer shew, that he does not belong to the most thinking 
people of whom he speaks, No. 49. p. 228. Hence, the 
reviewers themselves serve as proofs, that one individual 
ought not to be confounded with the whole of his nation. 

SECTION 1. 

The object of our physiological investigations is the con- 
nexion of the manifestations of the mind with the organiza- 
tion. In this respect we maintain, that in this life the mind 
cannot manifest any power without the instrumentality of 
brain ; and that each sort of manifestations depends on a 
peculiar part of the brain. 

The literary tribunal of Edinburgh does not yet agree 
with the proposition, that the brain is necessary to the man- 
ifestations of the mind. In No. 48, the xth article aspires 
to prove the contrary. This article looks exceedingly 
learned, but all the cases, copied from various authors, may 
be reduced to two classes. The greater number of the 
facts mentioned prove that the brain may be injured on one 
side, while the manifestations of the mind continue. This, 
however, is easily explained, by the cerebral parts being 
double as well as the eyes, ears, and other senses. Was 
the Reviewer unacquainted with this circumstance ? 

Some cases are mentioned, where the whole brain was 
destroyed, while the mind continued to manifest its powers. 



72 

Dr. Quin's, and especially Sir Everard Home's authority is 
relied on, p. 447. This gentleman saw a ' female child, 
born hydrocephalic, the head being very large. She lived 
nearly five months; during this period nearly 128 ounces of 
fluid were drawn off from the head, at six successive tap- 
pings. She w T as not disordered by the operations, and, not- 
withstanding the progress of the disease, continued healthy 
and strong until within twelve days of her death, when she 
fell into a wasting. On opening the head, two quarts of a 
clear pellucid fluid were found within the cranium. The 
dura mater was complete, the edges of the falx and tentori- 
um in contact with the fluid. The spinal cord was seen at 
the large hole of the occipital bone, and a little medullary 
bulb behind the orbits, but that was all that could be found 
for brain.' 

There are many cases related in writings, where it is said 
that there was only water in the cranium, and no brain at 
all. Sir Everard Home, whose short essay gave to the 
Reviewer the occasion of writing a long article, seems to 
have been endowed with the second sight, relatively to hy- 
drocephalic heads. It was a great omission, certainly, in 
the Reviewer, not to copy from Sir Everard's paper, that 
singular case, which never could occur, described as fol- 
lows : {Philosophical Transactions for the year 1814. 

II. p. 473.J 'In a boy the enlargement of the head 
was perceived at three months, and increased for three 
years, and then appeared to be stationary ; and the child 
till that period was sensible. The upper part of the skull, 

that time, began to ossify ; and in three years more 
there was only an irregular space of the os frontis remaining 



73 

open. The child continued sensible till three years old, 
and then became gradually less so ; did not know what he 
did ; heard sounds, but could not see. At six years old he 
died. The child was three feet three inches high ; the 
skull twenty-seven inches round ; the water contained in 
the two lateral and third ventricles, was six ale pints and a 
half in quantity. The cerebrum formed a thin case of 
medullary substance, surrounding this cavity. The cere- 
bellum was entire.' In a note Sir Everard adds, ' The 
lining of the lateral ventricles was tough ; the septum luci- 
dum elongated, so that the corpus callosum was raised 
up close to the skull ; the fair of the dura mater being en- 
tirely obliterated. The water in the third ventricle had 
split the fornix and septum lucidum into two, and the thin 
membranes in the lucidum had holes in them, making a com- 
munication between the third and lateral ventricles. The 
substance of the brain surrounding these cavities, as well as 
the pia mater covering it, had no convolutions ; there was 
a continued smooth surface. On the right side, upon ichich 
the child was usually laid, there were no remains of medul- 
lary or cortical substance, and there the pia mater and dura 
mater adhered together ; there was no remaining brain be- 
tween the third ventricle and sella turcica. On the left side 
of the left hemisphere the medullary and cortical substance 
was only half an inch thick. The corpora striata and thalami 
nervorum opticorum were small and tough ; the union be- 
tween the thalami was elongated into a broad flat ligament. 
The two commissures and iter ad infundibulum had the 
natural appearance. The olfactory nerves were tough 
and small ; the optic nerves had no medullary pulp ) the 



74 

other nerves going out of the skull had undergone no 
change. 1 

Why has this infallible Reviewer written so many essays 
against miracles? Was it this case which induced him to 
exclaim, p. 448, ' This essay we have little hesitation in 
pronouncing to he one of the most creditable papers which 
Sir Everard Home has produced. The object of it is quite 
philosophical, and it is respectably executed.' I beg, how- 
ever, leave to remark, that such things as are here stated 
by Sir Everard, are in absolute contradiction to nature and 
to reason. Who could see that the two commissures and 
the iter ad infundibulum had the natural appearance, while 
there was no remaining brain between the third ventricle 
and sella turcica, that the pia mater, viz. the blood-vessels 
of the brain, existed on the right side, while on that side 
there were no remains of medullary or cortical substance ; 
that the corpus callosum was lifted up, the fornix and sep- 
tum lucidum split into two, and therefore the communica- 
tion between the third and lateral ventricles established ; 
that six pints and a half of water were contained in the two 
lateral and third ventricles ; that the cerebrum formed a 
thin case of medullary substance surrounding this cavity ; 
that the substance of the brain surrounding those cavities, 
as well as the pia mater covering it, had no convolutions ; 
that there was a continued smooth surface ; that the lining 
of the ventricles was tough ; while at the same time there 
were no remains of medullary or cortical substance on the 
right side ; that the corpus callosum, the fornix, and the 
commissures existed without brain on the right side ? He 
i believes in such assertions, places credit in them in the 



to 

direct ratio of their impossibility; because the existence of 
lateral ventricles, a thin case of brain, brain half an inch 
thick, and no brain, are employed to designate the same ob- 
servation. 

If the Edinburgh Reviewer can praise a paper which 
contains such things, I am proud that our works merited 
none of his approbation. At all events, ' Judex damna- 
tur cum nocens absolvitor.' To support my judgment, I 
say, that the article gives a very imperfect idea of Sir Ever- 
ard's paper. Every reader of the article thinks, that the 
original essay contains the adduced facts, while Sir Everard 
has not quoted a single author, as if he were the first who 
had begun to make observations of that kind. It is true, 
no other can make such observations as the above ; but 
many authors were attentive to the results of injuries of the 
brain. The Reviewer himself states, p. 449, that ' the 
greater number of the cases m the paper before us, are so 
far valuable, only as they serve to confirm what had already 
perhaps been sufficiently made out by the authors we have 
just named,' (the Reviewer, not Sir Everard Home ;) viz. 
'That there is no sort of uniformity either in the kind or 
the degree of the symptoms which accompany the diseases 
of the brain.' Afterwards, when I speak of our means of 
discovering the functions of the brain, I will say more of 
the method employed by Sir Everard Home. Here it is 
sufficient to have shown, that the Edinburgh Reviewer de- 
serves the application of the law established by himself. 

With respect to the non-existence of brain in hydroce- 
phalic heads, Morgagni already has severely blamed his pre- 
decessors, especially Duverney. He declares, that in cases 



76 

similar, he has always found the brain distended 
into a thin membrane ; and he relates, that the same has 
been observed before him by Tulpius, Vesalius, and several, 
other anatomists. He has also shown, how anatomists, by 
mere inadvertency, imagine, that the water is contained 
between brain and skull. The subject is treated at 
considerable length in my work on Physiognomy, p. 147 — 
IjS. 

In addition to the preceding remarks, it may be said, that 
the literary gospel of Edinburgh does not only believe in 
the manifestations of the mind without brain, but also in the 
possibility of exercising voluntary motion of the lower ex- 
tremities without spinal cord. This curious article, in fact, 
refers to the case of ' a young man w 7 ho had his cord com- 
pletely cut across, opposite the tenth dorsal vertebra, by a 
musket ball, and yet did not suffer the slightest loss of vol- 
untary motion in the lower part of the body. 5 If critical 
reviewers believe in such things, which are in contradiction 
to the observations of all ages and nations, they may, with 
the same propriety, believe in the stories of giants, of people 
without teeth, or without neck, in the existence of nations 
who have lost their tails, and others w r ho still preserve this 
honorable mark of affinity with the brutes. And we may 
Apply to them their own words : ' If they succeed in con- 
single individual of common parts and observation 
that this assertion is truth, they will find little difficulty, we 
apprehend, in persuading mankind in general, that they hear 
k v l h and see by their ears.' No. 49. p. 247, 

think nature is constant in its laws, and never makes an 
exception. If the spinal cord is necessary to voluntary 



77 

motion, this latter will never occur without the spinal cord. 
The time will explode, I trust, such marvellous notions, ac- 
cording to which the manifestations of the mind can appear 
without brain, and voluntary motion without spinal cord, 
and able philosophers will explain the large hydrocephalic 
heads according to sound principles of anatomy and phys- 
iology. 

Thus we maintain, that there is not one fact well ascer- 
tained, that the mind has shown its powers, while the brain, 
or rather both brains, were annihilated. As to the second 
part of our proposition, viz. that each species of manifesta- 
tion of the mind depends on an appropriate part of the 
brain, I will not quibble long about indirect observations 
and inductions, but proceed immediately to direct facts and 
experiments. 

SECTION II. 

We endeavor to ascertain the nature of the functions of 
the cerebral parts, by the influence which the size of the 
organs has on the phenomena of the mind. I beg to re- 
mark, that we do not pretend to distinguish by the size of 
the organs with what degree of energy the mental powers 
appear. To do this, we must consider, besides the size of 
the organs, their internal constitution, their exercise, and 
the mutual influence of the powers. This distinction is kept 
in view throughout all my work on Physiognomy. In the 
second edition, which the Reviewer quotes, p. 190, 191, 
I have detailed our opinion concerning the absolute size of 
the brain, and conclude, ' It is not, however, possible, even 
in individuals of the same kind, to measure their faculties 



78 

according to the absolute size of their brain. Hence it is 
necessary to look for other means of determining the degree 
of the faculties of the mind.' Pages 215 and 216 I have 
said, ' In order to judge exactly of our proceeding, it must 
be considered, that we do not endeavor to determine every 
degree of activity of any cerebral part, but only the nature 
of its functions, and to this end its size is sufficient.' ' I 
admit even the possibility, that in the same individual, the 
internal constitution of the different parts of the brain may 
vary, in the same way as the optic nerve may be more irri- 
table than the auditory or olfactory.' The critic might also 
have read, p. 526, i I have often repeated, that in speak- 
ing of the actions of men, it is not sufficient to consider the 
size of the organs of the respective faculties, but that the 
internal constitution of the cerebral parts, the exercise of 
their faculties, and their mutual influence, contribute also to 
their different degrees of activity.' Notwithstanding, the 
conscientious Reviewer tells his readers, that ' Gall and 
Spurzheim, in affirming that the vigor of intellect is always 
proportioned to the size of the head, seem to have been de- 
sirous of trying how far their effrontery might be carried.' 

• 49. p. 247. 

The learned critic goes so far as to assert, p. 245, c that 
there is not the slightest approach to a uniform connexion 
between the vigor of intellect, or the strength or peculiarity 
of inclinations in man, and the size of the brain ; that intel- 
lect of every degree and of every kind, and inclination of 
every variety, is found combined with brains of all sizes. 
Page 246, he repeats, 'We deny, that there is any constant 
correspondence, or any connexion whatever, between the 



79 

dimensions of a man's head and his intellect and inclinations, 
either in kind or degree.' 

When I first read the preceding passages, I was giving 
lectures in Dublin. My auditors at that time will recollect, 
that, in showing to them a cast, and the picture of a gen- 
tleman, I publicly declared, that c If the conscientious per- 
son who had written the article on our doctrines in he 
Edinburgh Review, has such a configuration of head asthe 
cast or the picture, I would give up my farther investiga- 
tions into the functions of the brain.' Since that time I 
have repeated everywhere the same declaration ; and I am 
convinced that no one, whose head offers such a configu- 
ration as that above referred to, could have acted as the 
Reviewer, without subsequent repentance. 

Our numerous observations concerning the influence of 
the size of the brain on the manifestations of the mind, 
induce us to maintain, that a too small brain is unfit for the 
operations of the mind ; and that the greater number of 
idiots from birth have too small brains, and a few of them 
too large heads, that is, heads distended by water collected 
in the interior of the brain. We, however, do not say, that 
all idiots have small heads. Idiotism, in fact, may be ob- 
served in heads of every size. 

The learned Reviewer replies, p. 246, 'We affirm it 
to be, that idiots in general have uncommonly large heads.' 
I should like to know where he has made his observations. 
On the Continent it is as we state ; and I found the same 
in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Even in Edinburgh 
nature makes no exception. In the poor-house near the 
west church I saw four idiots ; none had a large head, 



80 

but one had an uncommonly small head. A silly boy with 
a very small head, is met in the streets of Edinburgh, to 
the sport of other children. On the other hand, I found 
several hydrocephalic individuals, who are not idiots. One 
of them, the most remarkable, lives in Musselburgh. The 
head of this person, who is 23 years of age, is 39 inches in 
circumference ; but the manifestations of the mind are not 
suppressed. 

Secondly, We maintain, that men of great or universal 
talents never have small brains ; but we do not assert, that 
large he^ds are always accompanied with great genius. The 
explanation of these different propositions is understood, 
because the size of the brain is a necessary, but not the 
only condition, to the manifestations of the mind. The in- 
ternal constitution is as important as its size. 

Lastly, We maintain, that in the same individual one 
part of the brain, being much larger than the others, show r s 
its superior influence on the manifestations of the respective 
power, in the same way as, in the same person, one mus- 
cle, being much larger than the others, shows greater 
strength of voluntary motion. 

These different assertions can be decided by experience 
alone. 

SECTION III. 

The question arises, whether it is possible to distinguish 
the size of the brain and its parts by the exterior of the 
head. We affirm that it is so, as far as it is necessary to 
our purposes. 

The Edinburgh Reviewer imagines, that the head must 



81 

be opened to examine the size of the brain and its parts. 
If, however, that were the case, only a small number of 
observations could be made ; but as in living persons the 
size of the brain can be distinguished, observations of 
this kind may be easily multiplied. It is, however, un- 
derstood, that the dimensions of the brain are smaller than 
those of the head ; but as there is no empty space be- 
tween brain and skull, great external differences of size 
and form in the head, correspond to analogous internal 
differences in the brain. It is to be observed, that we draw 
no inference from small insignificant differences of dimen- 
sion. This explains also, why the teguments and the two 
tables of the skull, not being exactly parallel, do not prevent 
our observations in young and adult persons: our inquiries, 
however, are uncertain in old age ; the brain then often 
diminishes in size, while the external form and size of the 
head remain the same as they were before. The objection, 
that the two tables are not parallel, is often repeated, but 
can be made only by those who have never seen the exter- 
nal marks which we consider as indications of larger cere- 
bral parts. 

The conscientious Reviewer states, p. 252, ' The dif- 
ference of the different regions of the brain, whether it 
be confined to one dimension, or extend to all, is very 
inconsiderable, seldom, we believe, amounting to half an 
inch, and never, we are confident, exceeding one inch 
over an extent of six inches, and often it is so small as just 
to be preceptible and no more.' 

From this statement I draw the inference, that this learn- 
ed critic has not compared many heads. Any contractor 
8* 



82 

who furnishes hats to the army could have given him bet- 
ter information. I can assert, that I have skulls in my 
collection, some of which, in certain dimensions, are the 
double of others. It is true, there are cases where the dif- 
ference is scarcely perceptible, but these heads are not the 
subject of decisive observations. 

The conscientious Reviewer was not satisfied with dis- 
playing such unusual knowledge, but continued, p. 242, 
4 It is not true, that there are ever such eminences on the 
surface of the brain, accompanied with projections of the 
cranium, as Gall and Spurzheim have affirmed ;' and p. 
253, ' We venture to affirm, that such prominences on the 
head as Gall and Spurzheim have described, indicating 
certain eminences of the brain within, and uniformly accom- 
panying some peculiarity of intellect or inclinations in the 
individual, never have been observed ; and that all they 
have been so good as to write on this subject, is a mere 
fiction. Were it worth our while, w r e could even under- 
take to show, without much difficulty, that this piece of 
invention is inconsistent with itself, in various circumstances, 
and that it presumes a degree of blindness and ignorance in 
those to whom it is addressed, which it was really very 
cruel in Drs Gall and Spurzheim to suppose.' 

I reply only, that in Edinburgh as well as in other places, 
in my public lectures, I have shown such prominences of 
which we speak, on real skulls which I have in my collec- 
tion. And with regard to the acuteness of the Reviewer in 
such observations, he will not accuse me of ever placing 
much reliance on him. 



S3 



SECTION IV. 



Experience alone can decide concerning the accuracy or 
inaccuracy of our observations and inductions. In my 
work on Physiognomy I have declared, that ' we never ad- 
mit exceptions; that, when an exception occurs, it proves 
that the truth has not yet been discovered, p. 258 ; — that I 
neve r advance any thing that cannot be observed by every 
other person ; that I do not listen to any objection founded 
upon reasoning alone ; and that one fact, well observed, is 
to me more decisive than a thousand metaphysical opin 
ions,' p. 270. 

The Quarterly Review, however, thought it suitable to 
tell its readers, ' Of course, one instance is very properly 
considered just as satisfactory an evidence that the conclu- 
sion is conformable to fact, as a hundred would be,' No. 
25. p. 1G9. c Even admitting this system of Drs Gall and 
Spurzheim to be even so plausible as an hypothesis, it can- 
not possibly derive any sort of evidence from experience. 
For the same reason, it is equally impossible to contradict 
it from experience,' p. 171. ' Even allowing, that the ar- 
guments of Drs Gall and Spurzheim, instead of being 
sheer nonsense, had been ever so ingenious and acute, still 
they could not throw the slightest probability upon the doc- 
trine which they wish to establish, because that doctrine is 
matter of fact, and matter of fact never can be proved by 
reasoning a priori. Whether every protuberance upon the 
head be, or be not the sign of some particular character of 
the mind, is clearly a question of fact ; let it therefore be 
Droved to be a fact, as all other facts are proved : in such a 



84 

. the explanation which Drs Gall and Spurzheim pro- 
pose, would at least have a fair claim to be heard,' p. 177. 
This is another clear specimen that Reviewers can criticise 
books without reading them ! From p. 262 to 271, in my 
book, our proceeding is quite differently described. I 
will copy only one sentence, p. 264. ' It is known that, in 
general, physical truths improve in proportion as observa- 
tions are repeated. We continue, therefore, to multiply 
our observations, and as, in respect to several organs, the 
number of these observations is immense, we consider the 
respective organs as established. With regard to them, we 
must insist on our opinion, so long as from experience we 
are not convinced of the contrary. Several organs, how- 
ever, are still only probable, and others merely conjectural, 
requiring a greater number of observations, in order to be 
determined with the same degree of certainty, as those 
which are supported by the most satisfactory proofs.' 

The conscientious examiner of Edinburgh, with respect 
to our proceeding, made ' some effort, and briefly observed, 
that not one of our assertions is true, and that not one step 
of our reasoning is correct,' p. 252. ' Can it be possible,' 
asks the philosopher, ' that the great Drs Gall and Spurz- 
heim have not observed, in the course of their multifarious 
inquiries into nature, that phenomena may coincide, without 
being related to each other as cause and effect ? Were it 
established, that all great mathematicians had black eyes, 
and all poets blue ones, would any sensible man, from this 
alone, think of ascribing the mathematical talent, in the one 
case, or the poetical genius in the other, to the color of 
the iris ?' p. 247. 



85 

Had this learned Reviewer also studied Chap. I. of 
Part III. of my book, he would have seen, that we are aware 
of the difference between coincidence and the relation of cause 
and effect to each other, and never lose sight of it ; that we 
prove our assertions in the same way as any physical truth. 
If, however, an observer could shew, that only mathematicians 
have black eyes, and only poets blue ones ; that every one 
who has black eyes and no one but those, have mathematical 
talents ; or that every one with blue eyes, and only those, are 
born poets : if he could repeat his observations in various coun- 
tries ; if he could compare the same talents through a series of 
animals, without finding an exception ; if he could support his 
observations by other means which I have detailed in my book, 
he might establish a physiognomical sign, and challenge his 
opponents to shew the contrary. So we do. If, for in- 
stance, we speak of a sign of self-esteem, let us see that a 
man, the most prominent feature of whose character is com- 
posed of self-conceit, does not exhibit the sign on his head, 
and we give up all our observations with respect to this 
peculiar organ. In the same manner, and by no other 
means, each organ is to be refuted by one single exception 
well ascertained. 

It cannot be useless to call the attention of the reader 
to that method which the literary gospel of Edinburgh, No. 
4S. Art. x. p. 44S, recommends, as follows : c Sir Everard 
Home's Essay not only possesses a proper method of inves- 
tigation, but sets an example of it, and is entirely free from 
the nonsense which is so commonly and so copiously put 
forth in writings upon similar subjects.' Which is then the 
proper method of investigating the functions of the brain? 



86 

This the reader does not acquire from the critical Review, 
b ill he may learn it from the original paper, inserted in the 
Philosophical Transactions for the year IS 14, Part II. 
Sir Everard Home tells us, ' The various attempts which 
have heen made to procure accurate information respecting 
the functions that belong to individual portions of the human 
brain, having been attended with very little success, it has 
occurred to me, that were anatomical surgeons to collect in 
one view all the appearances they had met within cases of 
injury to that organ, and the effects that such injuries pro- 
duced upon its functions, a body of evidence might be form- 
ed that would materially advance this highly important 
investigation.' He then informs us, that he has brought 
together certain observations, ' stating them as so many ex- 
periments upon the brain, with the conclusions which tend 
to elucidate this particular injury.' 

Every one will be anxious to know these observations. 
We read, ' that in the torpid state, commonly attendant 
upon any violent shake being given to the brain, the senses 
are so much impaired, that little information can be gained 
respecting the effects produced upon the internal organs ; 
that a coup de soleil is sometimes accompanied by delirium, 
loss of speech, and the power of swallowing ; that blood 
extravasated in the lateral and third ventricles was attended 
by repeated fits of vomiting and coma; that coagulable 
lymph spread over the union of the optic nerves, the pineal 
gland, and tuberculum annulare, was followed by permanent 
contraction of the muscles between the occiput and vertebra 
of the neck, dilatation of the pupils, and a great degree of 
deafness ; that the formation of pus under the dura mater 



87 

covering the right hemisphere, was accompanied by delirium, 
succeeded by coma ; that a tumor in the substance of the 
posterior lobe of the brain was attended with derangement 
of the functions of the stomach and bowels, and with double 
vision ; and that a deep wound into the right anterior lobe 
of the brain, attended with inflammation and suppuration, 
produced no sensation whatever, the senses remaining entire, 
and the person not knowing that the head was injured. In 
a case, also, in which the tuberculum annulare had become so 
hard as with difficulty to be cut with a knife, a considerable 
quantity of earthy particles having been intermixed with the 
medullary substance of the crura and other parts of the cere- 
bellum, and the cerebrum, and upper part of the cerebel- 
lum being unusually soft, the effects were, that the boy had 
been an idiot from birth, never walked, spoke and under- 
stood what was said, often went three days without food, 
and so on.' 

Sir Everard Home speaks in a manner as if no one be- 
fore him had made similar observations. His kind Review- 
er, however, shews by his numerous quotations, that Sir 
Everard is mistaken. Indeed, every one who is but half 
acquainted with the history of the healthy and diseased 
state of the brain, knows, that many authors have related 
similar facts. Nay, we learn from them also, that similar 
injuries of the brain have often been observed without any 
perceptible derangement of the mind, or any apparent dis- 
ease of automatic life. 

Hence this mode of proceeding is quite unfit for dis- 
covering the functions of the brain, and any hope from 
such a source is in vain. I support my opinion by the 



8S 

fruitless attempt of a great number of authors, and by the 
raccessfulness of Sir Everard Home himself. It is true, 
he speaks of a body of evidence which might be formed, 
and of conclusions which tend to elucidate this particular 
inquiry, but he has not drawn even one inference. In the 
various pathological affections of the brain, he has observed 
headache, giddiness, faintness, loss of memory, want of 
sleep, delirium, mania, depression of spirits, melancholy, apo- 
plexy, idiotism, hissing noise in the ears, deafness, blindness, 
loss of speech, irregular pulse, stupor, and mouth drawn to 
one side, numbness of the arms and legs, spasms in the lower 
extremities, stumbling in walking, pain between the shoulders, 
nausea, retching, slow action of purgative medicines, vomit- 
ing, convulsions, he. Is Sir Everard Home, perha ps 
inclined to draw the inference, that the brain is the organ 
of these symptoms, or of the states which are opposite to 
them ? This is, I think, sufficient to shew an intelligent 
reader, that in this way we never shall be able to determine 
the peculiar functions of the cerebral parts; that the Edin- 
burgh Review, for praising such a paper, deserves no 
more credit with respect to the physiology than to the ana- 
tomy of the brain, and that these critics, as they believe in the 
existence of cases w T hich are in contradiction to nature and 
reasoning, have still a great deal to learn before they can 
ne competent judges. 

SECTION V. 

to the individual organs of the manifestations of the 
mind, the literary gospel states only, < To enter on a par- 
ticular refutation of them, would be to insult the understand- 



89 

ings of our readers. Indeed, we will flatter the authors 
so far as to say, that their observations are of a nature to set 
criticism entirely at defiance. They are a collection of 
mere absurdities, without truth, connexion, or consistency ; an 
incoherent rhapsody, which nothing could have induced any 
man to have presented to the public, under a pretence of 
instructing them, but absolute insanity, gross ignorance, and 
the most matchless assurance.' 

Such arms, however, will not repel stubborn facts. Our 
antagonists, it seems, find it more easy to blame than to 
study, or to deny than to observe. They have not even con- 
sidered the meaning of the expressions by which w r e designate 
the various powers of the mind. The Quarterly Review, 
for instance, states that the name lnhabitiveness, which I give 
to the instinct of animals, to live in water or on dry land, in 
higher or lower regions, and so on ; to that instinct, which 
determines a young duck, as soon as it is hatched, to run 
towards the water, and the ptarmaghan to dwell at the tops 
of the mountains, &c. means 'a love of dwelling in elevated 
situations.' He explains Secretiveness by the love of steal- 
ing. The natural history of the two species of rats, the black 
and the brown, he found very ridiculous ; and he thought it 
sufficient to exclaim, ' Credat Judaeus Appella !' to change 
the cerebral organization of these two species of rats. 
I, however, must continue to say. that the difference 
of the brains of both species is easily distinguished. My 
auditors will recollect to have seen it. Thus, I repeat, to 
incontestable facts alone I shall pay further attention. 

The only reasonable difficulty started against the pos- 
sibility of distinguishing the organs at the lower part of the 
9 



90 

forehead, and behind the orbits, originates from the frontal 
sinus, and from the circumstance, that the brain, situate 
behind the orbits, and between both hemispheres, does not 
reach the surface of the skull. As, however, I have stated 
this difficulty, and given our explanation, the Reviewer ought 
to have copied our answer, instead of saying, c How could 
these gentlemen think so poorly of the eyesight of their 
readers, as to imagine, that, by the aid of their beautiful 
engravings, they could fail to discover, that some of the 
prominences in the skull which they describe, are said to 
be caused by elevations and portions of the brain, which are 
not even in contact with the skull of these parts?' p. 253. 

I always show to my auditors the difference between the 
external bony crest, often erroneously called frontal sinus, 
and the elevation, which we consider as a greater develop- 
ment of the organ of locality. They will also recollect my 
demonstrating, that children, and young and adult persons, 
have no holes between the two tables of the skull at the 
forehead, and that the real frontal sinus occur only in old 
persons, or after chronic insanity, in general, when the 
brain is diminished in size. I will copy only one passage 
from my book, in opposition to that of the Edinburgh Re- 
view. * The cerebral parts, situated behind the orbits, 
require some exercise on the part of the physiognomist, in 
order to be exactly determined. Their development is 
discoverable from the position and configuration of the eyes, 
and from the circumference of the orbits. It is, therefore, 
necessary to examine, whether the eye-ball is prominent 
or hidden in the orbit, or whether it is placed inward or 
outward. According to the position of the eye-ball we may 



91 

juds;e, whether the part of the brain which is situate 
against a corresponding part of the orbit, is more or less 
developed. 

6 It may be questioned, whether all organs reach the sur- 
face, so as to enable us to determine the organs of all facul- 
ties of the mind by the size and shape of the head ? There 
are, indeed, many convolutions in the middle line of the 
brain between the two hemispheres ; and there are also 
some others at the basis of the brain, and between the ante- 
rior and middle lobes, which, tl . do not reach the 
surface of the skull ; but it seems to me that a great part at 
rgan lies at the surface, and that if one part 
of any organ be well developed, the whole participates of 
this development. The whole cerebellum does not touch 
et it is possible to determine the size of the cer- 
ebellum, according to that part of it which reaches the sur- 
fac< which are, as above 
noticed, situate in the middle line between the two hemis- 
pheres, seem to be proportionate to the superincumbent 
organs; at least 1 have always observed a proportion in the 
tical direction, between these cerebral parts. In this 
way, it appears to be possible to determine all the organs, 
though the whole of their fibres do not terminate at the 
surface,' p. 38. 

There remains still an idea to be corrected. In point- 
ing out the functions of the cerebral parts, and in ascertain- 

g, that the size of the organs has some influence on the 
innate dispositions of the mind, we establish, in a certain 
degree, a physiognomical doctrine. This has been most 
erroneously represented by the conscientious Reviewer, in 



92 

saying) p. 250, ' The practical part of their doctrines, as 
it may be called, the physiognomy, craniology, or cranio- 
seopv, the part which teaches us how to find out, by the 
shape of the head, whether a man loves his children or 
kills them ; whether he steals or is very benevolent !' We, 
however, continually maintain, that we never can speak of 
the actions of man ; and after having mentioned the title, 
Physiognomical System, I begin the introduction of my 
book, ' This system is commonly considered as one, accord- 
ing to which it is possible to discover the particular ac- 
tions of individuals : it is treated as an art of prognostica- 
tion. Such, however, is not the aim of our inquiries ; we 
never treat of determinate actions ; we consider only the 
faculties man is endowed with, the organic parts by means 
of which these faculties are manifested, and the general 
indications which they present.' 

Thus, the more the reader will compare our works, and 
the reports given by our antagonists, and their and our opin- 
ions with nature, the more he will be enabled to decide of 
whom it may be said, i Were they even to succeed in shak- 
ing off the suspicion of malajides, which we apprehend is 
inseparably attached to their character, we should not hesi- 
tate to say, that we do not know any writers, who, with a 
conceit so truly ludicrous, and so impudent a contempt for 
the opinions and labors of others, are so utterly destitute o f 
y qualification necessary for the conduct of a philosoph- 
ical investigation.' Edinburgh Review, No. 49. p. 228. 



93 
CHAPTER III. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

This chapter may be very short, since in this depart- 
ment our British antagonists confine themselves to general 
considerations. The logical study of the author in the 
Quarterly Review, No. 25. p. 165, is the most simple : he 
admits in the mind only one understanding, and in that one 
he seems defective. c There is,' says he, ' no more solid 
reason for dividing understanding into faculties, than for 
dividing heat or light into faculties.' This comparison, 
however, of understanding with heat and light, is not 
very apt for simplicity, since neither has been proved 
to be a single substance. Besides, as one single under- 
standing does not explain the phenomena of the mind, and 
as all other logicians found it necessary to adopt several 
powers, I leave him to make the best use of his one faculty, 
and proceed to other propositions. 

The Edinburgh Review, as to the faculties which we 
adopt in the human mind, says, p. 243, i The ratiocina- 
tion of Drs Gall and Spurzheim is of the most difficult 
species to combat. Perhaps we might content ourselves 
with saying, that the whole doctrine of the thirty-three fac- 
ulties to which the argument relates, is downright nonsense, 
and so put an end to the discussion at once ; but we shall 
take the liberty of substituting for the names of the thirty- 
three faculties, two very simple and intelligible terms, viz. 
intellect and inclination.'' 
9* 



94 

The reasoning, or rather dogmatic decision of a Review- 
er, certainly will' not repel stubborn facts. I, however, 
should like to know, why the conscientious Philosopher 
adopts intellect and inclination. May I suppose that he 
does so, because one or the other alone does not explain 
the phenomena of the mind? Indeed, there maybe strong 
inclination without intellect. But is inclination always the 
same ? Is, for instance, the inclination of the hen towards 
the voung duck, hatched by her, the same with the inclina- 
tion of the young duck towards the water? Is the inclina- 
tion to calumny or respect, to concealment or candor, one 
and the same ? In the same way, is intellect only one ? In 
a boy who can repeat by heart whole pages after having 
read them once or twice, but cannot compare or distin- 
guish two separate ideas, is the intellect the same as in 
another who judges with precision of various ideas, but 
cannot recollect by heart one page ? Thus, as we can 
have one inclination, or one intellect, and not another^ 
philosophers have divided the powers of the mind into 
different sorts. Now we maintain, that those powers 
which are adopted by logicians as primitive or special 
faculties, do not explain the phenomena of the mind in 
the state of health and disease. Hence we admit a greater 
number, and as many as are necessary for the explana- 
tion of the manifestations of the mind. Particular and great 
innate talents, such as for mathematics, or music, or me- 
chanics, and so on, while the other faculties are extremely 
defective, viz. partial geniuses, who are in every other 
respect almost idiots, induce us to consider such powers as 
special. If then we find, by constant observation, that the 



95 

manifestations of such a power are never separate from the 
development of a particular part of the brain, we adopt all 
that is common to the manifestations belonging to one cere- 
bral part as the result of one special power, in the same way 
as it is acknowledged that all the manifestations of vision 
belong to one sense. Thus, in the division of the mental 
operations, we are guided merely by observation and induc- 
tion. Pride, for instance, cannot be explained by external 
circumstances alone, nor by intellect or inclination in gen- 
eral ; if now its appearance is always connected with a pe- 
culiar part of the brain, independently of the other powers 
of the mind, and of the other cerebral parts, we maintain 
that it belongs to a special faculty, different from the others. 
We then observe the different manifestations of this sort, 
and try to reduce them to one common consideration. Now, 
whatever speculative reasoning our adversaries may oppose, 
we insist on our observations, and will yield to facts alone. 

Our philosophy of the mind differs from all preceding 
opinions of the schools. Hitherto the special faculties of 
the mind were overlooked, and philosophers were satisfied 
with general or common considerations of the powers, or ' 
with the modes of their being affected. Instinct, for in- 
stance, in animals is a mere general view, viz, every inter- 
nal impulse to act. But the impulse to build, or to sing, or 
to migrate, or to amass provisions, or to place sentinels, he. 
cannot be the same impulse, any more than hearing, seeing, 
smelling, or tasting, are the same sensation. Hence, the 
philosophers were satisfied with the general view of instinct, 
and paid no attention to the special instincts* 

An example of a common consideration is perception, 



96 

that is, perception is common to various powers ; but the 
perception of the size, form, color, or place of an object are 
quite different sorts of perception. In the same way, mera- 
orv is always a reproduction of the impressions which we 
have perceived, but there is not one memory for every pre- 
vious perception. One sort of memory may be very ener- 
getic, and another quite defective. 

We admit two sources of activity in the mind, an inter- 
nal and external. To the former belong the instincts of 
animals, and the propensities and sentiments of man ; to 
the latter, the intellectual operations, as far as we acquire 
knowledge of the external objects, their qualities and rela- 
tions. Some powers make man act, others modify, assist 
and direct the actions ; still there are others destined to 
bring all the other faculties into harmony, and to constitute 
unity. 

One of our ideas, viz. the introduction of consciousness, 
sometimes active and sometimes passive, in the five senses, 
puzzled the Edinburgh Reviewer (p. 241.) a good deal. 
The difference, however, seems to have been observed at 
all times, since in all languages there are two sorts of signs 
press it. In the English we say, I see (passive) and 
I look at (active) ; I hear (passive) and I listen (active) ; 
I feel (passive) and I touch (active), he. In other words, 
consciousness is sometimes involuntary, sometimes volun- 
tary. 

These and other considerations are too complex for the 
simple philosophy of the Reviewers. As our opinions are 
not attacked in the particulars, there is no occasion for my 
giving here a more detailed explanation. Those who are 



97 

desirous of knowing our philosophical propositions, will find 
them in my work on Physiognomy. I have only to add, 
that if the conscientious Reviewer has found in himself only 
intellect and inclination, I leave it to others to judge, whether 
they have found his intellect limited in judgment, and his 
inclination extensive in malevolence. 

CONCLUSION. 

Considering the whole of the preceding statements, I 
may say, that I have done with those who arrogate the right 
of thinking and deciding for the rest of mankind ; with 
those ' thorough partizans, who are thorough despisers of 
sincerity ; ' (Edin. Review, No. 53. p. 14.) ; who will not 
allow the least credit to any one that has not their approba- 
tion ; who anonymously calumniate and detract ; who, in 
doing so, claim the merit of conscientiousness ; who dis- 
guise, mistate, and misinterpret ; who invent ridiculous 
monstrosities ; who, in using the most vulgar language, 
speak of personal dignity and politeness ; with beings who 
change assertions as it seems convenient ; who do not un- 
derstand the passages which they quote : who, from differ- 
ent chapters, extract sentences, illustrating different propo- 
sitions, and represent these their own fictions, as nonsensi- 
cal and absurd conceptions of the author ; with such writers 
on the brain, who have nothing in view but minute mechan- 
ical differences of size and form, and shades of color ; who, 
however, cannot see brown substance in the pons Varolii ; 
who, as if there were not, from ancient times, absurd names 
enough, invent in the brain, cul-de-sacs, pits, grooves, moun- 



9S 

. rings* lobules, and so on; who never consider the 

s in connexion and relation, nay. create artificial separa- 
tions ; who are attentive only to the mechanical appear- 
id never think of the functions of the parts ; who 
believe, that a man can walk, and have voluntary motion of 
his legs, without spinal cord, can philosophize without 
brain ; who can assert, that physiological inquiries of the 
brain are of no use to the medical profession ; who consider 
one brain and its parts as the standard of all other brains ; 
who admit, that the brains of men have their full growth at 
seven years of age, and do not undergo any change after- 
wards; and with such Historians, who affirm from erudite 
research, and as the result of many experiments, made un- 
der a variety of circumstances, that there is no foundation 
whatever for the supposition, that the convolutions consist of 
two layers ; who maintain, that numerous unequivocal in- 
stances are on record, and are even occurring every day, 
10 which large portions of the brain, nay, almost the whole, 
if not actually the whole of this organ, have been completely 
destroyed by the progress of hydrocephalus ; who hold this 
to be a fact just as certain as that there are many persons 
now alive whose legs have been removed by the knife of 
the surgeon ; and who at another time prove, that we are 
not the first who maintain, that the brain exists in hydroce- 
phalic heads, and that Reil could separate the convolutions 
in the middle line, after we had shown to him that structure 
four years before ; who, as author on the brain, did not 

te any anatomist to whom the decussation of the pyra- 
mids and the communication of the medulla oblongata with 

crura cerebri were known ; who ascribes the medulla 



99 

oblongata to the spinal cord, the mass of the pons to the 
cerebellum, and terminates the brain at the upper edge of 
the pons ; who denies the possibility of demonstrating the 
two sets of fibres, (diverging and converging) ; who does 
not mention the two layers of the convolutions ; and who 
afterwards, as pamphleteer, asserts, that long ago these things 
were known, that especially we have defrauded Reil, who 
published four years after we had shown him our anatomical 
discoveries, after we had demonstrated them in different 
countries, in the Universities of Germany, Denmark, Hol- 
land, and in Paris, and after the publication of numerous 
extracts by our pupils ; who tells his readers, that his pam- 
phlet owes its origin only to his strong anxiety for the pro- 
gress of medical knowledge, and deep concern for the repu- 
tation of a medical school which was indebted to anatomy 
for its first celebrity throughout Europe, but who makes 
morbid dissections, even in very rare cases, in the manner I 
have witnessed and described above ; who in that very pam- 
phlet accuses all anatomists, and almost all medical profes- 
sors and teachers of Edinburgh, and every one of my audi- 
tors, as unfit to distinguish brown and white substance ; who, 
in his * painful ' compilation, forgets the Monros, who de- 
serve to be mentioned as well as Malpighi and Mayer ; a 
neglect the less excusable, that Monro was one of the chief 
founders of the celebrity of the medical school of Edinburgh. 
Certainly, with such critical Reviewers, such would-be 
Philosophers, such mechanical Dissectors, and such Histo- 
rians, I have done for ever ; and I may say, with Job, (xiii. 
5.) ' Oh, that you would altogether hold your peace, and it 
should be your wisdom ! ' 



PHRENOLOGY 



ARTICLE 



OF THE 



FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW, 



BY 



RICH. CHENEVIX, Esq. F.R.S. &c. 



WITH NOTES BT 

J. G. SPURZHEIM, M.D. 

Of the Universities of Vienna and Paris, and Licentiate of the 
Royal College of Physicians in London. 



' Opinionum commenta delet dies nature judicia eonfirmat.' — Cicero. 



PREFACE. 



The proprietors of the Foreign Quarterly Re- 
view have now granted the permission to publish 
separately the first article of their No. Ill, on 
Gall and Spurzheim, or Phrenology. This per- 
mission was particularly desirable, since the article 
is highly calculated to remove prejudice against, 
and to excite inquiry into, the truth of a system 
which finally must prove eminently important and 
interesting to mankind. I avail myself of this 
opportunity to correct, by additional notes, some 
prevailing errors, and to explain several points of 
phrenology, which are misunderstood, because 
they have been misrepresented, I like discussions 
fairly conducted, and as long as truth alone is the 
object of inquiry ; but I am disgusted with scien- 
tific pursuits being degraded by a party-spirit and 



selfish passions. The impartial reader, the^rore, 
is requested not to revere any petulant critic as a 
decisive oracle, and not to rely on the opinions of 
friends or foes, but only on the authority of nature 
and her immutable laws ; to examine and judge 
for himself, and to remember Lock's saying ( Hu- 
man Understanding, edit. 2d, line 4, chap. 15, 
sect. 6, ) i There cannot be a more dangerous 
thing than the opinion of others, nor more likely 
to mislead one, since there is much more falsehood 
and error among men than truth and knowledge.' 

J. G. Spurzheim. 
London : 8, Gower Street. 



ARTICLE 



OF THE 



FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW. 



Art. I. — 1. Anatomie et Physiologie du Systeme Ncrveux en 
general, et du Cerveau en particuUcr, Sfc. Par F. J. Gall 
et G. Spurzheim. 4 vols. 4to. avec Atlas in folio. Paris. 
1810—1819. 

2. Observations sur la Folic, ou sur les Derangemens des 
Functions Morales et Intetteetuettes del' Homme. Par G. 
Spurzheim, M. D. 8vo. Paris. 1817. 

3. Observations sur la Phrinologie, ou la Connoisance de 
V Homme Moral et Intellectual, fondee sur les Functions du 
Systeme Nerveux. Par G. Spurzheim, M. D. 8vo. Paris. 
1818. 

4. Essai Philosopliique sur la Nature Morale et Intellectuelh 
de VJIomme. Par G. Spurzheim, M. D. 8vo. Paris. 1820. 

5. Essai sur les Principes Elementaires cV Education. Par 
G. Spurzheim, M. D. 8vo. Paris. 1S22. 

6. Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau et sur celles de chacune de ses 
parties. Par F. J. Gall. 6 vols. 8vo. Paris. 1822—1825. 

Twenty-five years have nearly elapsed since the ques- 
tion which we are now going to examine was first laid be- 
fore the British public. Since that period, it has occasion- 
ally been brought into notice, or fallen into neglect, as the 
continental publications have made their way to this island, 
1 



or as the teachers of the system have thought fit to address 
themselves directly to Englishmen. The manner in 
which it was then received was not such as to authorize a 
belief that it ever could be treated but with contempt. 
Within a few years, however, it has attracted so large a 
share of attention, it has been contemplated with so much 
earnestness, with so much gravity — that we deem it a duty 
to allot some pages to its serious consideration. 

To the serious consideration of phrenology ! What, 
then, is the Foreign Quarterly, in the very outset of its 
career, to show itself a feeler of heads, a cranioscopist, a 
teller of fortunes from cerebral bumps and excrescences ? 
No such thing ; but the pages of this Review ever shall be 
open to any appeal that science makes to it, to any litera- 
ry subject that comes within its sphere. Formerly, indeed, 
our co-mates and brothers in criticism made rather merry 
with the lucubrations of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim ; but the 
thing is now beyond a jest ; and as it has so long been left 
to writhe under the lash of ridicule in vain, it may be well 
to try it by some other test, and to apply to it some of 
the philosophic calmness by which phrenology itself pro- 
fesses to be guided. 

But, before we proceed one step in this inquiry, we 
must disclaim all intention to decide upon the truth or 
fallacy of the pretended science. We do not mean either 
to discuss or to judge it on our own account, but to let the 
parties speak for themselves ; to give room to phrenolo- 
gists to state whatever they can in support of their doc- 
trine ; and to anti-phrenologists, to refute as much as they 
can of it ; to put our readers in possession of the materials 
which may enable them to form an opinion, and then leave 
them to judge for themselves. If, too, we are serious 



upon the subject, it is because the subject itself is a very 
serious one. That which threatens the subversion of every 
moral theory which has been devised since the days of the 
seven sages of Greece, deserves to be treated with some 
gravity. In the country of Bacon, all philosophic claims 
should be canvassed with equity ; in the country of Shak- 
speare, to mention with levity anything relating to the 
human heart is derogatory. 

The complaints of phrenologists, that their doctrines 
have been mis-stated, and their opinions purposely mis- 
represented, have led us to admit the present article, in 
order to rescue the land of juries from the imputation of 
condemning any man unheard, still more upon wilful per- 
versions of his own words and meaning. Here then w T e 
shall proceed a little differently from the usual method of 
reviews, and utterly abstain from personal interference. 
We shall introduce the parties themselves to the bar, and 
let them severally plead their own cause. The sceptral 
we of criticism we shall abdicate, and not once shall w r e 
use that plural pronoun in this article, but as appertaining 
to phrenologists, or to anti-phrenologists, in whose favor 
the choice spirits of the Foreign Quarterly abjure their 
magic, and become listeners like the public. The only 
part we take in the trial is to devote some of our pages as 
an arena in which we allow the combatants to wrestle as 
they please, but into which we ourselves shall never once 
descend. The fact is, that the present state of the ques- 
tion ought to be laid before the public candidly ; for if the 
writings of one party have not always been exactly as 
might be wished, the clamors of the other have done them 
little credit. The method we adopt appears to us fair, 
and the use of the first person may a little dramatize the 



dull discussion. The pleadings shall be opened, on the 
part of the phrenologists, by a statement of the case, faith- 
fully collected from the writings of Dr. Gall himself. 

* In the ninth year of my age,' says our author, * my parents sent 
me to one of my uncles, who was a clergyman in the Black For- 
est, and who, in order to inspire me with emulation, gave me a 
companion in my studies. I was, however, frequently reproached 
for not learning my lesson as well as he did, particularly as more 
was expected from me than from him. From my uncle, we were 
both put to school at Baden, near Rastadt, and there, whenever our 
task was to learn by heart, 1 was always surpassed by boys who, 
in their other exercises, were much my inferiors. As every one of 
those wlio were remarkable for this talent, had large and promi- 
nent eyes, we gave them the nickname of ox-eyed. Three years 
after this we went to school at Bruchsal, and there again the ox- 
eyed scholars mortified me as before. Two years later I Went to 
Strosburgh, and still found that, however moderate their abilities in 
other respects, the pupils with prominent eyes all learnt by heart 
with great ease. 

1 Although,' continues our author, ' I was utterly destitute of 
previous knowledge, I could not help concluding, that prominent 
eyes were the mark of a good memory ; and the connexion be- 
tween this external sign and the mental faculty occurred to me. 
It was not, however, till some time afterwards, that, led on from ob- 
servation to observation, from reflection to reflection, I began to 
conceive that, since memory has its external sign, the other facul- 
migbt very well have theirs. From that moment every person 
Likable for any talent, or for any quality, became the subject 
of new attention, and all my thoughts directed to a minute Study 
of the form of their heads. Little by little, I ventured to natter 
myself that I could perceive one constant shape in the head of 
at painter, of every great musician, of every great me- 
chanic, severally denoting a decided predisposition in the individ- 
ual to one Of other of those arts. In the mean time I had begun 
the study of medicine, where I heard much about the functions of 
the muscles, of the viscera, &c; but not a word about the func- 



tions of the brain. My former observations then recurred to me, 
and led me to suspect what I afterwards proved, that the form of 
the skull is entirely due to the form of the viscus which is contain- 
ed in it. From that instant I conceived the hope of being able 
one day to determine the moral and the intellectual faculties of 
man, by means of his cerebral organization, and of establishing a 
physiology of the brain. I therefore resolved to continue my re- 
searches, until I should attain my object, or find it impossible. 
The task would have been less difficult had I abandoned myself 
entirely to nature. But I had already learned too much of the er- 
rors and prejudices then Caught upon those subjects, not to be biass- 
ed by them ; and 1 was still further entangled by the doctrines of 
metaphysicians, who teach that all our ideas come from our senses; 
that all men are born alike, that education and accident alone make 
them differ. If this be true, said I, no faculty can have an exter- 
nal sign ; and to study the brain, its parts, and its functions, is abso- 
lute madness. Still I remembered my former observations : I 
knew that the circumstances in which my brothers and sisters, my 
school-fellows, my playmates, had, from their infancy, been placed, 
w^re all alike. I saw that education was bestowed in vain en 
some persons, — that others had talents without it. I observed a 
proportionate variety in the dispositions of animals. Some dogs 
are born hunters, while others of the same litter cannot be taught; 
some are peaceful, some ill-tempered. In birds there is a similar 
diversity. The whole animal kingdom spoke then in favor of my 
strong surmises, and I resolved to prosecute my plan. It was not 
till thirty jears had been spent in uninterrupted study, in observing 
men of every description, and in many countries, men remarkable 
for some talent or some defect, for some vice or some virtue ; in 
studying inferior animals, domestic or wild, the inhabitants of air 
or of earth, that I ventured to embody my observations, and pub- 
lish them in one comprehensive work. ' 

Such is the account which Dr. Gall gives of the origin 
and progress of his discoveries. It has been stated, not in- 
deed in his own words or order, but the scraps and morsels 
of which it is composed were fairly picked out of his own 



work?. Now, say the phrenologists, if the doctrine of the 
relation between cerebral development and mental mani- 
festation, — if, as Dr. Spurzheim has more appositely nam- 
ed it, phrenology, be false — then men cannot sufficiently 
reprobate the idle nonsense of the little urchin who dared 
to turn from his rudiments to gaze at the eyes of his con- 
disciples, and call them by a name which the father of po- 
etry applied only to the queen of the gods, the venerable 
Juno, /3ow*ri£ crorvia Hpr\ 9 ox-eyed ; or, as he probably 
had it in his Hoch-Deutsch dialect, ochsenaugen. If it be 
true, then we (phrenologists) declare that so extraordinary 
an instance of early sagacity, of premature combination, 
such an innate spirit of observation and induction, never 
yet has come to our knowledge. We have seen prodigies 
of music, of painting, of calculation, of every simple talent, 
in very unripe infancy : we know that wonders of very ear- 
ly learning have existed ; but there is not upon record, a 
person who, at the age of nine, caught the first glimpse of 
a system which he afterwards made the study of his life ; 
of a system which, as Dr. Spurzheim says, must, if true, 
1 absolutely and entirely change the philosophy of the hu- 
man mind,' and make the study of mankind a new study. 
All that we have read of youth, of childhood, fades before 
this example ; and we know no alternative but for men to 
admire how the doctor has escaped phlebotomy and vene- 
section ; or else to say at once that he ranks high, and very 
high, among the extraordinary geniuses that have lived to 
honor the human species. 

And this is not the only incident which creates alike di- 
lemma. Young Gull, like many other boys, was very fond 
of looking for birds' nests ; but a point in which he differ- 
ed from the usual truants ' who rob the poor bird of its 



young,' was that his motive was a love of natural history* 
His observation of the situations in which each species 
built, easily led him to discover the place of abode ; and 
he spread his nets successfully, because he had studied the 
habits of the bird that he wished to ensnare. But what he 
could not do was to return to the spot in the woods or 
wilds, over brake, over brier, through devious paths, where 
his prey was caught ; in other words, he was not an adept 
at finding his way. This deficiency induced him to take 
with him one of his companions, named Scheidler, who 
possessed this faculty in a very high degree ; for, while 
Gall, after marking his road with boughs and branches, by 
making incisions on the trees, by employing many means 
of technical memory, never could unravel the track, his 
companion, without any effort, without even any apparent 
attention, never failed to take the shortest road to every 
nest and snare. From this arose a brief but interesting 
colloquy, most characteristic of mankind at large, whose 
great rule for judging others is self: — 'How is it,' says 
Gall, 'that you contrive to find your way thus ?' 'How 
is it,' answered Scheidler, ' that you contrive not to find 
yours ? ' 

Dr. Gall did not immediately perceive anything peculiar 
in the head of this youth ; but, in order to lay it up among 
the treasures of his observation more faithfully than memory 
could do, he took an indestructible and rigid transcript of 
its form, by moulding it in plaster. To this cast he could, 
at all times, refer ; he could study and re-study it; he could 
compare it with the living and the dead. He was well 
convinced that a faculty for recognizing places, and the 
ways which lead to them, did exist ; and what remained to 
be done was, to determine the shape of head which was 



concomitant to this faculty. He, therefore, inquired among 
acquaintances for persons distinguished for their local 
memory, and at length found two. Schenberger, a. cele- 
brated landscape-painter, told him that, in his travels, he 
merely took a sketch of the scenery which he wished to 
paint, and that afterwards, when he made a more circum- 
stantial drawing of it, every tree, every bush, almost every 
hvzc stone, came back into his mind. Another was Meyer, 
the author of Dia-na-sore, whose greatest delight was to 
wander from place to place, and who, not having the means 
himself of indulging this propensity, always attached him- 
self to some rich man, in order to travel with him. He, 
too, had an extraordinary power of recognizing local rela- 
tions. The heads of these two persons, then, Gall mould- 
ed, and compared them with that of Scheidler. He turn- 
ed and twisted them in every direction, and for a long time 
found only differences, whereas what he sought was a re- 
semblance. At length, however, he was struck with a co- 
incidence in the region situated on each side of the root of 
the nose, and slanting upwards above the eyebrows. From 
that moment he considered it as probable that the organ of 
local perceptions was situated in this spot; and, according 
to his assertion, all his subsequent observations, which have 
been incredibly numerous, have fully confirmed his opinion. 
Dr. Gall, as before mentioned, had many brothers and 
sisters, all of whom received the same education, and were, 
in all things, exposed to the same influences ; yet their fac- 
ulties and dispositions were totally dissimilar. One of his 
brothers showed a very early disposition for devotion ; his 
toys were the ornaments of the Catholic altar, which he 
made and engraved himself; his pastime was prayer and 
high mass. His father had intended him for trade, but this 



profession he peremptorily refused, because, as he said, it 
would expose him to tell lies. At the age of twenty-three, 
this young man ran away from his paternal home, and turn- 
ed hermit. His father, however, recalled him, allowed him 
to pursue his studies, and five years afterwards he received 
holy orders, in which he spent a life of mortification and 
piety. Subsequently to this very juvenile observation, Dr. 
Gall remarked, that some of his con-disciples had, as he 
calls it, a receptiveness for religious instruction ; while oth- 
ers were totally averse to it. Among the persons who had 
embraced the clerical profession, he saw some who were 
studious, pious, and scrupulous; others, who were idle, in- 
dolent, and who wished for nothing more than to live at 
ease, and at the expense of others. He conceived that 
these tendencies were innate; and, in order to embrace a 
wide range of experiment, he frequented churches, monas- 
teries, visited religious seminaries, and observed both men 
and women in the world. One of the first things which 
struck him was, that the most devout were bald on the sum- 
mit of the head ; 'yet,' said he, c women are more devout 
than men, and women are seldom bald. Baldness, therefore, 
has no connexion with devotion*' He then perceived on 
these bald heads that the summit was much elevated, slop- 
ing as it were from the forehead to the centre ; and this shape 
he found common to both sexes. He then concluded, that 
an elevation in that region of the brain was the organization 
which gives a disposition to devotion and religious feelings. 
He had not long been in possession of this induction, 
when a remarkable fact offered itself to his view, imparting 
a singular conviction to his mind of the accuracy of his 
conclusion. He remarked that all the pictures of saints, of 
martyrs, of persons recorded for their religious zeal and suf- 






10 

(brings, of our Saviour himself, were high in this region; 
ami that, even in the most remote antiquity, artists had giv- 
en this peculiar form to all that has been handed down to 
us of heads of high priests, of sacrifices, and of whatever 
persons they held to be most pious, sacred, and venerable. 

Such were the first steps of this, the youngest child that 
ever caught a glimpse of facts, and drew inferences, which 
he afterwards called philosophy — which he taught as such, 
and which has found followers. Who could have suppos- 
ed, that from the perceptions of a mere brat of nine years 
old, a system could have ensued, which, in the hands of Dr. 
Spurzheim, would, in the year 1826, have filled not only 
the large lecture-room of the London Institution, but all the 
stair-cases, corridors, and passages leading to it, with hear- 
ers ? and, great, indeed, must be the folly or the wisdom of 
the age. 

Another observation of this young man was, that, among 
his school-fellows, the most adept at learning by heart were 
not those who retained facts the best ; in the same manner 
as local and verbal memory did not always accompany each 
other in the same mind. Thus, then, was he led to sur- 
mise, that memory was of more kinds than one ; that it was 
not a simple faculty : and to a conclusion which some beard- 
ed philosophers had drawn before him, that there is a mem- 
ory for words, another for places, and another for things ; 
exactly coinciding — but entirely without his knowledge — 
with the memoria verbalis, the memoria localis, the memoria 
realis, of his predecessors. He continued to make observa- 
tions on the world at large respecting this faculty, as he had 
done respecting the others, and by the same means ; and 
he at length succeeded in assigning the situation of its cor- 
responding organ in the head. 



11 

But the most extraordinary instance of folly and pre- 
sumption, if the system be false, or of sagacity, if it be true, 
is, that Dr. Gall was not satisfied with observing the talents 
of his fellow-students ; he carried his prying spirit into their 
moral tendencies, and examined their characters. One of 
his companions had a head so strangely shaped, that he 
could not help remarking it. It was particularly broad 
above the temples, and the boy was renowned for his cun- 
ning and his tricks. Another boy, whose countenance be- 
spoke extreme candor — ars est celare artem — had a head 
of the same shape, and Gall immediately mistrusted him. 
In both cases his conjectures were confirmed, and his ob- 
servations in later life gave them an additional force. When 
practising as physician, one of his patients died of consump- 
tion ; Gall was struck at the breadth of his head in this re- 
gion ; and shortly afterwards a long scene of artifice and 
swindling came to light. Another person, so notorious as 
to have been posted as a knave by the police of Vienna, 
and whose head was of the same shape, confessed to Dr. 
Gall that he knew no pleasure equal to deceit. 

As Dr. Gall acquired experience in his art, his tact be- 
came more sure, and he accumulated observations ; but his 
method of proceeding was alike throughout. It would in- 
deed have been difficult to devise any better method than 
that which suggested itself at his first observation; and, be 
his doctrine true or false, that justice is due to him. 

One or two more examples of his mode of discovering 
faculties and organs must be given. To study what is now 
called combativeness, he collected persons of the lower 
classes in his house, treated them with wine, excited their 
talkativeness respecting each other, and uniformly found 
that one shape of the head belonged to the contentious, 



12 

another to the gentle. He followed the same plan with re- 
gard to the propensity to thieving, and with the same suc- 
. On one occasion, he was requested to examine the 
head of a lady who was remarkable for the strength and 
durability of her friendships, and to take a cast of it ; and 
thus was led to the discovery of the organ of attachment. At 
Vienna, he knew a man, who, from his eternal doubts and 
irresolution, was nicknamed Cacadubio ; the remarkable 
form of his head, compared with others, revealed this fac- 
ulty, together with its local habitation. A servant of one of 
his friends gave the first idea of an organ of benevolence, 
at a time when he little thought that what is called a good 
heart is seated in the brain. Some of the organs became 
first evident to him in the heads of brutes. Thus the dif- 
ference between the heads of graminivorous and carnivo- 
rous animals pointed out what he then called the carnivo- 
rous instinct — murder; and which now is termed by the 
modified name of destructiveness. The innate love of 
offspring, so necessary to every breathing thing, he found 
by the difference which exists between the skulls of males 
• and females in general ; although he did not know exactly 
what faculty the occipital protuberance denoted, until he 
perceived it most strongly in female monkeys, whose attach- 
ment to their young is so extraordinary. 

Thus it was that Dr. Gall proceeded in comparing the 
manifestations of the mind with the development and form 
of the brain, until he had ascertained the situation and 
functions of twenty-seven organs ; all of which he looks 
upon to be as clearly demonstrated, as observations multi- 
plied in various bearings, repeated upon an incredible num- 
ber of individuals, and continued during a long life, can 
demonstrate anything. 



13 

Now, if all these observations are correct, we cannot 
sufficiently commend the Baconian spirit with which they 
were conducted. It is not very probable that, when Dr. 
Gall was a young student of medicine in a German univer- 
sity he had acquired much intimacy with the writings of the 
great English chancellor; yet he certainly adhered to his 
mode of amassing knowledge as closely as if Lord Bacon 
had rocked him in his cradle. Not a single fact was 
assumed without repeated observation and verification; 
not a truth was admitted without proof; no a priori con- 
ceptions were greeted as demonstrations. Still less is it 
credible that when Gall was hunting after bird's-nests, led 
by the local memory of his companion Scheidler ; less 
again, that, when, having seen nine winters in the Schwartz- 
wald, he measured the projecting eyes of his school-mates, 
he had heard of the lord of Verulam ; yet in no single in- 
stance was he found tripping in his researches. By an 
innate impulse, he followed, unconsciously, the precepts of 
Bacon, and of nature, — because Bacon, Gall, and nature 
were the same, — as unerringly as if the Novum Or- 
ganum had been his primer. Thus say the phrenologists. 
(Note 1.) 

The system of Dr. Gall, then, they continue, was, as 
appears in his writings, the result of observation ; and to 
determine its validity nothing was necessary but to verify 
whether those observations were accurate or not. That a 
facility for learning by heart is accompanied by prominent 
eyes is, if true, an independent fact, standing by itself, 
leaning on no other fact : it is an oak of the forest, not a 
parasite fungus. Inquiry might stop there, and say, 'I 
know that you can learn by heart with ease, because I see 
that your eyes are prominent;' and the assertion would 



14 

not be either more or less true, be the function assigned to 
what cause, to what member, to what organization, it may. 
If, however, the physiology of the function can be ascer- 
tained — if its connexion with a certain part of the body 
can be traced — if it can receive the support of anatomy — 
inasmuch as anatomy can explain any animal function, it 
must be confessed that assurance becomes doubly sure. 

The visible and tangible signs of the twenty-seven facul- 
ties, announced by Dr. Gall, were found upon the ex- 
ternal surface of the head ; but to attribute them to the 
muscular integuments would be absurd : still more irra- 
tional would it be to suppose that the bony covering, the 
dura or the pia mater, the tunica arachnoides, bad any 
share in the operations of the mind. In the brain only 
could the seat of the moral powers be placed ; and to it 
the attention of the author was immediatelv directed. 

It is now time to introduce to the reader's acquaintance 
the second person whose name stands at the head of this 
article, and whose anatomical labors bear so conspicuous a 
part in the promotion of phrenology. Little had been 
done to connect this science with anatomy ; and the dis- 
section of the brain by some appropriate method was yet a 
desideratum, when Dr. Spurzheim, of whom more ample 
notice shall presently be taken, became the pupil, and 
afterwards the associate, of Dr. Gall. 

The mode of examining this viscus then in practice 
among anatomists, and not yet entirely abandoned, was, 
after removing the membranes which enclose it, to cut 
through it in different directions, to scrape away a large 
portion of its substance to show the falx cerebri, the cor- 
pus callosum, the fissura silvii, the tubercuta quadrigem- 
inae, the fornix, and the septum lucidum, together with 



15 

many other parts, of which the names are well known and 
barbarous, but of which compassion on the reader's jaws 
and mind forbids the enumeration. To Drs. Gall and 
Spurzheim this entire method appeared faulty, and they 
were induced to invent some other mode. Not that they 
expected anatomy to be more indiscreet in revealing the 
secrets of nature on this than on any other occasion, or to 
tell why and how the brain thought and felt, any more 
than why the liver secreted bile. They knew that the 
structure of an organ seldom denotes its functions ; but 
they knew also that anatomy and physiology cannot be in 
contradiction. The most obvious method was to examine, 
in the dead body, whether the volume of the brain, in the 
region where an organ was supposed to be situated, bore a 
settled proportion to the manifestation which the living 
subject had given of the corresponding power of mind. 
This question was investigated by experiment; and it was 
ascertained, by the inspection of a very great number of 
subjects that the volume and the faculty were in constant 
unison. 

This was an immense step; but *nU actum reputans 
dum quid superesset agendum,' Drs. Gall and Spurzheim 
were still anxious to obtain more satisfactory knowledge of 
the structure of the brain. The figures and drawings 
which transverse cuts of the cerebellum offer, the arbor 
vitae, however picturesque, did not content them. A for- 
tunate accident occurred at length, and one more mystery 
of nature was explained. 

A woman who had been afflicted from her youth with 
hydrocephalus, died of an inflammation of the bowels at the 
age of fifty- four. Her head was found to contain four 
pounds of water ; and this liquor had so insinuated itself 



16 

into every little cavity, — had so divided every little vessel 
from the substance in which it was imbedded, that their 
texture became immediately visible. Drs. Gall and Spurz- 
heim then endeavored to find a method which they might 
substitute at pleasure for that which diseased nature had 
employed in the case of this woman, and of many other 
hydrocephali. It was not, indeed, till they reached Paris 
that, stimulated by some objections made, as shall present- 
ly be related, by the French Institute, they fully assured 
themselves of the most effectual methods of performing 
this important operation. There they discovered that if 
the brain be macerated in nitric acid, diluted with alcohol, 
or in alcohol alone, if it be boiled for twelve or fifteen 
minutes in oil ; if a small jet of water be projected upon 
any part of it from a syringe; or if it be blown upon 
through a blow-pipe, a separation is effected which answers 
every purpose. By introducing the hand, too, between 
the convolutions, a division may be operated ; and by any 
of these means the structure of the brain becomes as evi- 
dent as when it has been macerated for years in the mor- 
bid serosity of hydrocephalus. 

Previously to these anatomists, the brain was considered 
as a pulpy mass, in which the whole nervous system had 
its origin. If by chance any attempt was mads to assign 
a function to any particular part, to explain its use or 
nature, the success was as small as the epithets by which 
those parts were named were uncouth. Neither was this 
extraordinary. Let us suppose that any muscle of the 
body, the soleus maximus for instance, had always been 
cut through transversely, it would always have presented 
a transverse section of its mass ; but no such idea as wa 
now have of its fibrous texture could have been formed. 



17 

But the mere inspection of a muscle at once denotes a 
fibrous texture, which in the brain is not so evident; and 
the phrenological anatomists have the merit of a very- 
important discovery, in showing that the white substance 
of the brain is not less truly fibrous than the sole us max- 
imus. And here would be the place to introduce some 
anatomical details in support of our doctrine, but in pity to 
our general readers we shall refrain. We can, however, 
assure them, that every fact evinced by dissection is in our 
favor, and we defy our antagonists to the proof. Drs. Gall 
and Spurzheitn have most triumphantly answered every 
objection on this head, and dread not to encounter any 
more which can be adduced. Let it be remembered 
merely that two great facts have been incontrovertibly 
established : — 1st, the possibility of unrolling the convolu- 
tions of the brain ; 2d, the fibrous texture of the white 
substance. (Note 2.) 

Before Dr. Gall had received all the lights which the 
collateral sciences could throw upon his doctrine, and sup- 
ported principally by the plain fact, abundantly ascertained, 
that a certain form of the head constantly accompanied a 
particular mental power, he began to communicate his 
knowledge to others. He was at that time established as 
a physician at Vienna, a city not very remarkable for the 
brilliancy of its scientific lights. His auditors were not nu- 
merous, but they were select ; among them were Profes- 
sors Froriep, Walther, Martens, who published accounts of 
what they had heard ; and lastly, the best of all, Dr. Spurz- 
heim, who, already advanced in the study of physic, be- 
came his pupil in J 800, and in 1804 his associate. Dr. 
Gall at first spoke only of the elevations and depressions 

on the cranium, as denoting the presence or the absence of 
2 # 






18 

determinate dispositions and talents ; neither could he then 
ik of much more. This imperfect state of his doctrine 
entailed upon it a disadvantage which it has hardly yet 
surmounted ; and exposed it to very absurd criticism and 
ridicule, under the names of craniology, cranioscopy, (rec- 
ollect, gentle reader, that phrenologists, not the Foreign 
Quarterly, speak,) bumps, protuberances, &c. When, 
however, he became strengthened by the positive conclu- 
sions of anatomy, and by the cheering analogies of physi- 
ology, he grew more confident in his system ; and that 
confidence imparted to it a form and pressure more worthy 
of so vast a subject. His conversations at length assumed 
the appearance of lectures ; but he had not continued them 
long, when the Austrian government took the alarm, con- 
ceiving that to explain the functions of the brain, and to 
improve its anatomy, must be dangerous to society. An 
order was issued, prohibiting all private lectures, unless by 
special permission. The doctor was reduced to silence, 
but as the government was less solicitous about the morali- 
ty of strangers than of its own subjects, leave was granted 
to corrupt them by teaching them the pernicious doctrine, 
and one or two Englishmen thus learnt w T hat the Austrians 
know not yet, that the brain is of some use. It is not sur- 
prising, that they who have the largest portion of this or- 
gan should be the most curious to know to what end it is 
given. 

In the year 1805, our masters, warmed with the zeal of 
proselytism, turning their backs upon the lofty steeple of 
St. Stephen's Kirclie, to find their world elsewhere, sallied 
forth to attack the reigning cerebral and metaphysical doc- 
trines of their fellow-creatures. They travelled together, 
pursuing their researches in common, to more than thirty 



19 

towns of Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, and never 
stopped till they reached Paris. This itinerancy has been 
made the subject of reproach to them in this country ; but 
we are all too apt to judge of others by ourselves. The 
habits of the nations which they wished to convert required 
such a mode of proceeding. Their own native land, di- 
vided into many petty states, has innumerable little points, 
but no one large focus of light. From the one to the oth- 
er of these thought travels as slowly as the slumbering note 
twanged through the twisted horn and snaps-swallowing 
throat of a Westphalian post-boy. In Holland it advances 
about as rapidly as an Amsterdam Cupid, flying on the 
wings of Love, in a Dutch trekschuit. In France there is 
one great metropolis of wit, as flashy as it is frivolous ; and 
in this, words, with the ideas annexed to them, if any 
there be, whiffle about from the Faubourg St. Germain to 
the Faubourg St. Honore, and back again across the Pont 
de Louis XVI., in the cutting of a caper ; but this empo- 
rium stands in the dreary middle of a vast wild, and 
preaching any where 'but in Paris to the French nation 
would literally be preaching in the desert. In Britain, on 
the contrary, a new idea mounts a mail-coach, drawn by 
four blood-horses, with plated harness, as light as the cha- 
riot of Queen Mab, and sweeps along with Macadamized 
speed and Magna Charta security, from Land's End to 
John o'Groat's house, in as short a time as Puck would 
take to ! put a girdle round about the earth.' Everywhere 
the fame of our professors had preceded them — every- 
where new discoveries awaited them ; and they had not 
gone one half of their round among the German universi- 
ties, before they had met with more applause and more 
opposition than they had experienced in all their former 
lives. 



20 

A feature of these memorable travels was the visit of 
Dr. Gall to the prison of Berlin, and the fortress of Span- 
dau. On the 17th of April, 1805, in the presence of the chiefs 
of the establishment ; of the inquisitors of the criminal depart- 
ment ; of various counsellors ; and of many other witness- 
es, he was conducted to the prison at Berlin, where up- 
wards of two hundred culprits, of whom he had never 
heard till that moment, to whose crimes and dispositions 
he was a total stranger, were submitted to his inspection. 
Dr. Gall lays much weight upon this visit, as a very great 
practical test of the truth of his system ; and the result is 
official, being witnessed by persons in the employment of 
the Prussian government, and proposed for that purpose. 

Dr. Gall immediately pointed out, as a general feature 
in one of the wards, an extraordinary development in the 
region of the head where the organ of theft is situated, and 
in fact every prisoner there was a thief. Some children 
also detained for theft, were then shown to him ; and in 
them, too, the same organ was very prominent. In two of 
them particularly it was excessively large ; and the prison- 
registers confirmed his opinion that these two were most in- 
corrigible. In another room, where the women were kept 
apart, he distinguished one drest exactly like the others, 
occupied like them, and differing in no one thing but in 
the form of her head. 'For what reason is this woman 
here,' asked Gall, ' for her head announces no propensity 
to theft r' The answer was, c She is the inspectress of this 
room.' One prisoner had the organs of benevolence and 
of religion as strongly developed as those of theft and cun- 
ning ; and his boast was, that he never had committed an 
act of violence, and that it was repugnant to his feelings to 
rob a church. In a man named Fritze, detained for the 



21 

murder of his wife, though his crime was not proved, the 
organs of cunning and firmness were fully developed ; and 
it was by these that he had eluded conviction. In Maschke, 
he found the organ of the mechanical arls, together 
with a head very well organized in many respects ; and his 
crime was coining. In Troppe he saw the same organ. 
This man was a shoe-maker, who, without instruction, 
made clocks and watches, to gain a livelihood in his con- 
finement. On a nearer inspection, the organ of imitation 
was found to be large. ' If this man had ever been near a 
theatre,' said Gall, 6 he would in all probability have turn- 
ed actor.' Troppe, astonished at the accuracy of this sen- 
tence, confessed that he had joined a company of strolling 
players for six months. His crime, too, was having per- 
sonated a police-officer, to extort money. The organs of 
circumspection, prudence, foresight, were sadly deficient in 
Heisig, who, in a drunken fit, had stabbed his best friend. 
In some prisoners he found the organ of language, in oth- 
ers of color, in others of mathematics ; and his opinion in 
no single instance failed to be confirmed by the known tal- 
ents and dispositions of the individual. 

On the 20th of April the visit was made at Spandau, in 
presence of the privy-counsellor Hufeland, one of the most 
philosophic physicians of his age ; and of several other 
official persons of similar respectability. Four hundred 
and seventy heads w T ere submitted to inspection. In every 
robber the organ of theft was highly developed, accompa- 
nied by various other organs in the different individuals. 
In one Dr. Gall perceived the organ of mathematics strong- 
ly pronounced ; together with others denoting skill in the 
mechanical arts. This man, Kunisch, had in fact commit- 
ted several robberies, in which his dexterity had much as- 



22 

I him, and his address was such, that he was intrusted 
with the care of the spinning-machines in the house of cor- 
rection. Gall asked him whether he had any knowledge 
of calculation ? ' Do you think I could put together a piece 
of work like this, if I could not calculate the effects ?' An 
old woman, in whose head theft, theosophy, and love of off- 
spring were the prominent organs, confessed the justice of 
her punishment, and returned thanks to God for having 
placed her in that establishment; for since her confine- 
ment, her children, whom she herself could not have edu- 
cated, had been sent to an orphan-house. Albert, distin- 
guished for his haughtiness to his fellow-prisoners, was an 
example of a strong development of the organ of self-es- 
teem. Regina Doering, an infanticide, was presented to 
him among a band of robbers, but he immediately called 
to Dr. Spurzheim to remark how in one organ her head 
resembled that of a servant of his at Vienna, a very excel- 
lent person in all other respects, but who delighted in kill- 
ing animals. In Kunovv, he found the organ of music pre- 
dominant; and it appeared that all the misfortunes of this 
person proceeded from his having ruined himself by this 
his ruling passion. Raps had the organs of theft, of mur- 
der, and of benevolence, highly developed. His crime 
was having robbed an old woman, round whose neck he 
had fastened a rope with intent to strangle her, but having 
completed his robbery, an emotion of pity prompted him to 
return and loosen the rope, by which act the life of the old 
woman was saved. Such is an extract of the narrative of 
these celebrated visits to the prisons of Berlin and Spandau, 
which, in their day, attracted much notice throughout Ger- 
many, 



23 

But the great trial still awaited our travellers at the bar 
of the French Institute ; and there they presented them- 
selves, to receive official support or condemnation, in the 
face of expectant Europe. 

The Institute was then in all its glory. In proportion as 
Buonaparte had cannonaded, it had grown enlightened. 
As the hero was the referendary of military justice, so was 
it the areopagus of scientific truth. The chief of the ana- 
tomical department was M. Cuvier; and he was the first 
member of this learned body to whom Drs. Gall and Spurz- 
heim addressed themselves. 

M. Cuvier is a man of known talents and acquirements; 
and his mind is applicable to many branches of science. 
But what equally distinguishes him with the versatility of 
his understanding, is the suppleness of his opinions. He 
received the German doctors with much politeness. He 
requested them to dissect a brain privately for him and a 
few of his learned friends ; and he attended a course of 
lectures given purposely for him and a party of his selec- 
tion. He listened with much attention, and appeared well- 
disposed toward the doctrine ; and the writer of this article 
heard him express his approbation of its general features, 
in a circle which was not particularly private. 

About this time, the Institute had committed an act of 
extraordinary courage, in venturing to ask permission of 
Buonaparte to award a prize medal to Sir H. Davy, for his 
admirable galvanic experiments, and was still in amaze at 
its own heroism. Consent was obtained ; but the soreness 
of national defeat rankled deeply within. When the First 
Consul was apprised that the greatest of his comparative 
anatomists had attended a course of lectures by Dr. Gall, 
he broke out as furiously as he had done against Lord Whit- 



24 

worth ; and at his levee he rated the wise men of his land 
for allowing themselves to be taught chemistry by an Eng- 
lishman, and anatomy by a German ; sat verbum. The 
wary citizen altered his language. A commission was 
named by the Institute to report upon the labors of Drs. 
Gall and Spurzheim ; M. Cuvier drew up the report. In 
this he used his efforts, not to proclaim the truth, but to 
diminish the merits of the learned Germans. Whenever 
he could find the most distant similarity between the slight- 
est point of their mode of operating, and anything ever 
done before, he dwelt upon it with peculiar pleasure ; and 
lightly touched upon what was really new. He even af- 
fected to excuse the Institute for having taken the subject 
into consideration at all, saying that the anatomical re- 
searches were entirely distinct from the physiology of the 
brain, and the doctrine of mental manifestations. Of this 
part of the subject Buonaparte, and not without cause, had 
declared his reprobation ; and M. Cuvier was too great a 
lover of liberty not to submit his opinion to that of his Con- 
sul. His assertion, too, that the anatomy of the brain had 
nothing to say to its mental influence, he knew to be in di- 
rect opposition to fact ; but even the meagre credit which 
he did dare to allow to the new mode of dissection, he wish- 
ed to dilute with as much bitterness as he could. So un- 
just and unsatisfactory, so lame and mutilated did the whole 
report appear, that the authors of the new method pub- 
lished an answer, in which they accused the commissaries of 
not having repeated their experiments. Such w r as the re- 
ception which the science, that we (phrenologists) now see 
spreading over the globe, met with from the Academy of the 
Great Nation. 



25 

In November, 1807, Dr. Gall, assisted by Dr. Spurzheim, 
delivered his first course of public lectures at Paris ; and 
these the writer of this article heard with intense interest. 
His assertions were supported by a numerous collection of 
skulls, heads, casts ; by a multiplicity of anatomical, by a 
multiplicity of physiological facts. Great, indeed, was the 
ardor excited among the Parisians by the presence of the 
men, who, as they supposed, could tell their fortunes by 
their heads, as well as Mademoiselle le Normand could do 
with a pack of cards ; and chiromancy was abandoned for 
cranioscopy. Every one wanted to get a peep at the ne- 
cromancers ; every one was anxious to give them a dinner 
or a supper ; and the writer of this article actually saw a 
list on which an eager candidate was delighted to inscribe 
himself for a breakfast, distant only three months and a 
half; at wbieb breakfast he sat a wondering guest. But 
this was nearly all the harvest which phrenology reaped in 
Paris; and the season was not as long as the roll of festi- 
vals which curiosity had cooked. Though Dr. Gall has 
been a constant resident there, and has delivered lectures 
whenever an opportunity occurred, the public is not phre- 
nological : though Dr. Spurzheim has done all in his power 
to diffuse the science there, it has remained recluse. Some 
periodical publications in England have much overrated the 
attention paid to it among our neighbors ; but in truth the 
French have thought little upon it, neither will they think 
upon it, until their minds are more seriously bent upon a 
study which hitherto they have much neglected, — the 
study of the human being in other parts besides nerves and 
muscles. As a proof of this, we will mention that, in 1824, 
the government of that nation, as wise as that of Austria 
had been, prohibited the delivery of all lectures without its 
3 



26 

special permission ; and Dr. Spurzheim was obliged to con- 
fine himself to private conversations at his own house. This 
proceeding, which no rulers of a truly enlightened people 
would have dared to attempt, was the death-blow to all phre- 
nological inquiry in France, and an apt reply to the lucubra- 
tions of the New Edinburgh Review, which had prompous- 
ly stated that the French were greater proficients in phre- 
nology than the British. It must have been sufficient to dis- 
gust Dr. Spurzheim with every project of continuing his in- 
structions there ; and is most probably the reason why, with- 
in the last two years, he has taken this country so entirely 
under his tuition, and made it most essentially his phreno- 
logical domain. 

It is probable, however, that, long before this time, a 
mind like Dr. Spurzheim's must have seen that the soil 
really appropriated to the seeds of his doctrine was pro- 
found, reflecting England, where every power of thought 
is kept so much within its own province, and is so well em- 
ployed there, and where so important a branch of philoso- 
phy would be received with all due reverence. As soon 
as the communications were open, he came to this island, 
and repaired to London. The moment was not propitious. 
The nation was still smarting with the scars of war. Many 
things, too, had indisposed it to the lore of Germany ; it 
was jealous and touchy upon the subject of quackery. 
Mesmer, Mainaduke, Perkins, the morbid sentimentalism 
of IMiss Anne Plumptre's translations, had made it so ; and 
Dr. Spurzheim had to struggle against all these obstacles. 
The campaign was opened by a dissection of the brain, 
at the Medico-Chirurgical Society's in Lincoln's-Inn 
Fields ; and the novelty, as well as the truth of the demon- 
stration, that this viscus is composed of fibres, created no 



27 

small surprise among the learned audience. The choice 
of such a mode to enter upon the subject was eminently- 
judicious, as it placed it at once upon a respectable foot- 
ing, by making an appeal to science. The effect in its fa- 
vor, however, was not so general as might have been ex- 
pected. When a course of lectures was delivered, not 
more than forty auditors were present ; neither did a sec- 
ond course attract a more numerous circle. 

From London, Dr. Spurzheim proceeded to Bath, Bris- 
tol, Cork, and Dublin, where also he delivered lectures. 
He then proceeded to Scotland. If, during his excursion, 
the harvest of proselytes was not yet very great, the ad- 
ditions to his observations were extensive and interesting ; 
and it is much to be wished that he may one day publish 
his remarks upon the different races which he clearly dis- 
tinguished, spread like horizontal strata over the land through 
which he travelled. In the Scottish capital another fate 
attended him, and a decisive moment was approaching. 
There, as in London, he opened his campaign by the dis- 
section of the nervous mass ; but the circumstances of the 
demonstration were highly piquant. 

The writings of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, conjointly and 
separately, had attracted the attention of our periodical 
critics, and an article had appeared in the Edinburgh Re- 
view for June, 1815, in which these authors were most 
heartily reviled. Hardly an opprobrious epithet in the 
language was omitted on their moral, as on their intellectu- 
al characters, and they were roundly called fools and knaves. 
The conclusion is as follows : — c The writings of Drs. Gall 
and Spurzheim have not added one fact to the stock of our 
knowledge respecting either the structure or the functions 
of man ; but consist of such a mixture of gross errors, ex 



28 

igant absurdities, downright mis-statements, and un- 
meaning quotations from Scripture, as can leave no doubt, 
apprehend, in the minds of honest and intelligent men, 
as to the real ignorance, the real hypocrisy, and the real 
empiricism of the authors.' Should phrenology prove 

. the sagacity of this article will be most brilliant, even 
though, from beginning to end, it attempts no means of 
refutation but assertion. Should the doctrine prove true, 
then that production will be held by all men, as it now is 
by phrenologists, as the most flippant, pert, vulgar, igno- 
rant, and presumptuous, that ever appeared in that able 
collection ; and very wise, or very weak indeed, must be 
the physiologist to whom the works there criticized can 
teach nothing. 

The intention of Dr. Spurzheim always was to visit the 
Scottish Athens, but this article confirmed it. He procur- 
ed one letter of introduction for that city, and but one ; that 
was to the reputed author of the vituperating essay. He 
visited him, and obtained permission to dissect a brain in 
his presence. The author himself was a lecturer on anat- 
omy, and the dissection took place in his lecture-room. 
Some eyes were a little more, or a little less, clear-sighted 
lhan others ; for they saw, or thought they saw, fibres. A 
second day was named. The room w r as as full as it could 
be, particularly as an intermediate bench was reserved for 
Dr. Spurzheim to carry round the subject of inquiry to 
every spectator. There, with the Edinburgh Review in 
one hand, and a brain in the other, he opposed fact to as- 
sertion. The writer of the article still believed the Edin- 
burgh Review, but the public believed the anatomist ; and 
that day won over near five hundred witnesses to the fibrous 
structure of the white substance of the brain, while it drew 



29 

off a large portion of admiring pupils from the antagonist 
lecturer. 

Thus aided by success, Dr. Spurzheim opened a course 
of lectures on the anatomy and the functions of the brain, 
and its connexion with mind. He used to say to the 
Scotch, ■ You are slow, but you are sure ; I must remain 
some time with you, and then 1' 11 leave the fruit of my la- 
bors to ripen in your hands. This is the spot from which, 
as from a centre, the doctrines of phrenology shall spread 
over Britain.' 

These predictions proved true. Converts flocked in on 
all sides ; the incredulous came and were convinced. Af- 
ter a residence of seven months, Dr. Spurzheim returned to 
London ; but the seeds of phrenological folly or wisdom 
were sown, and so rapidly did they germinate, that it would 
almost seem there was not a good plant among them. 

After an absence of three years from Paris, Dr. Spurz- 
heim returned there, and did not visit England again until 
1825. Meanwhile, the voices of phrenologists, the clamors 
of the enemies of the science were loud. The doctrine of 
phrenology had set the Old and the New Town, from the 
Calton Hill to the Castle, in a brain fever, a cerebral fer- 
mentation, which continued to send up bubbles, froth, and 
ardent spirit in phrenological confusion, until the year 1820, 
when, on February 22, the ebullition subsided, by the for- 
mation of a society, at the head of which stands the name 
of Mr. G. Combe. This gentleman had begun by being a 
sceptic ; but, by degrees he was convinced, and is now an 
ardent sectary. He was, we (phrenologists) believe, the 
proposer, and is the president of the earliest phrenological 
society formed in this world ; and his zeal and his writings, 
3* 



30 

his perseverance and his abilities, have placed him very high 
imoDg British phrenologists. 

In the beginning, this society was without heads or brains ; 
and a phrenological society without heads or brains, is still 
poorer than a mineralogical society without quartz or co- 
rundum, or a geological society without gneiss or granite. 
The penury was quickly supplied by ample donations. 
Not only skulls and masks, but the other necessary appen- 
dages just named, poured in from every side, insomuch 
that never did a learned body exist which had such a pro- 
fusion of them for its own and others' use. Their collec- 
tion increased most rapidly, and was liberally left open to 
public inspection. Their meetings were periodical ; and 
in 18*23 they published a volume of phrenological transac- 
tions, which, if the science be not false, will long be es- 
teemed. They gave an example, too, of candor at least, 
which was soon followed, and similar societies were formed 
in many other cities. Edinburgh had to wipe away a 
large offence committed against phrenology, and thus did 
she make amends. 

It would be long to enumerate all the successes and tri- 
umphs which this new science now obtained in the shape 
of societies, collections of busts, lectures fully attended in 
different parts of the British empire. London, Exeter f 
Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Cork, Hull, Dublin, Pais- 
ley, Dundee, vied with each other, according to their 
means, to learn and diffuse the science ; and in an instant, 
as soon as the doctrine was fairly stated, more phrenolo- 
gists sprung up among us than during twenty years in the 
country where Drs. Gall and Spurzheim had been residing 
all that time. 

In the British colonies, too, phrenology has not been 



31 

neglected ; and Dr. Murray Paterson, in the East India 
Company's service, delivered lectures at Calcutta, where a 
phrenological society was about to be formed. 

But the freest of nations must always be that in which 
whatever relates to the study of man will excite the great- 
est interest. Without such knowledge, indeed, liberty can- 
not exist. Such is a cause of the warm reception which 
phrenology has met with among its partizans in England, 
and of the no less warm opposition of its adversaries. The 
reverse, too, has procured it a tepid attention in France ; 
for, whatever be the forms of liberty there its spirit is yet 
to be born. It is, then, easy to conjecture what may be 
the mind of the United States of America toward this doc- 
trine. Dr. Caldwell, medical professor in Pennsylvania 
University, has edited ' Elements of Phrenology,' and de- 
livered lectures in Baltimore, Washington, he. ; and in 
one of the American Universities, a professor of phrenolo- 
gy is as regularly announced as of moral philosophy, or of 
anatomy, of chemistry, or of history. Neither have all the 
European States been heedless of it ; and the city of Co- 
penhagan boasts of Drs. Otto and Hoppe. 

It must not, however, be supposed, continue the phre- 
nologists, that all this was effected in Britain without oppo- 
sition or ill-will. The clamor against phrenology was loud 
and mobbish. The laughing journals scoffed, the weeping 
ones lamented ; some would have put it down by authority, 
some by ecclesiastical anathema. It would be too long and 
doleful to tell all the means to which some — few, indeed 
— resorted, to crush it without a hearing. But it is a prin- 
ciple in British law, because it is a feeling in British justice, 
that a man taken in the very act of murder shall not be 
dragged off to the first lantern-post, and there hanged 
without judge or jury. The same sentiment pervades all 



32 

our decisions ; and while some roared out that Drs. Gall 
and Spurzheim should be tied up in a sack with their evil 
deeds and drowned as witches, others demanded, as did a 
dying Irish judge — Lord Kilwarden — for his assassins, 
that they should be tried by the laws of God and of their 
country. A hearing has been obtained ; the trial is now 
proceeding ; and all that we (phrenologists) pretend to do 
is to address the jury, not for favor or for rigor, not for 
mercy or for fury — but for justice. 

The doctrine, as it is now taught and received in the 
countries just mentioned, does not exactly coincide with 
the original ideas of Dr. Gall, neither is his view of some 
of the details, at this moment, in all respects the same as 
that which Dr. Spurzheim has taken. Immense as have 
been the toils and labors of the creator of phrenology, it 
was decreed that his fate should still be human ; and that 
his life should not close without his learning, that, vast as 
was his horizon, it was not yet the limits of the earth. 

The mind of Dr. Spurzheim, in our opinion, (phrenolo- 
gists), seems to have been cast in a still more metaphysical 
mould than that of Dr. Gall, who, though he has shown 
very uncommon acuteness in his abstract inquiries upon 
mind, has yet left some points so feeble as to endanger the 
whole system. As an example — and it is the most strik- 
ing of all — Dr. Gall attributed to the same organs, — 
pride, the love of authority, self-esteem in man, and the 
predilection which some animals show for elevated regions, 
as the wild goat, the eagle, &c. Now this even his best 
disposed partizans found rather hard to grant; for it is not 
easy to admit that moral and physical height are one and 
the same thing. This piece of doctrine cooled his friends, 
heated his enemies, and stood in strong opposition to the 



33 

adoption and diffusion of his system. Dr. Spurzheim felt 
the necessity of examining it more closely. The part of 
the brain where this organ is placed by Gall, is prominent 
sometimes in the upper, sometimes in the under portion ; 
consequently it is not one organ ; for the very essence of 
an organ is to be one and entire. Hence, then, Dr. 
Spurzheim inferred two organs ; and experience has con- 
firmed his conjecture. To one of these he attributes self- 
esteem, to the other the love of habitation ; and thus has 
rescued the system from the ridicule thrown upon it by 
confounding two such opposite sentiments as those which 
prompt a man to esteem himself, and a chamois to climb a 
mountain ; while, at the same time, he has shown the con- 
nexion which might have led to the error, as long as the 
separation was not made. 

Another of Dr. Spurzheim's modifications was a similar 
analysis of the faculty of music. The well-known fact 
that there are many excellent harmonists who are but 
indifferent timeists, and vice versa, induced him to conclude 
that an organ of music must be composed of an organ of 
tone and an organ of time ; and he directed his researches 
towards the discovery. Experience and observation have 
authorized him to resolve the former simple organ into the 
two separate ones just mentioned ; and his opinion has 
been adopted by all the phrenologists of this island. 

In like manner it occurred to Dr. Spurzheim that poetry 
could not depend upon a simple faculty, but that it must 
have its origin in more powers than one. Besides, there 
are persons endowed with a large development of the 
organ to which poetic inspiration is attributed, and who are 
not poets. A feeling for the grand and beautiful, which 
gives exaltation and rapture to the mind, Dr. Spurzheim 



considers to belong to this portion of the brain, and he 
terms it the organ of ideality, as one of its chief functions 
is to picture an ideal world of beauty and sublimity ; to 
impart enthusiasm ; and, in the fine arts, to accomplish 
very much of what has usually been attributed to imagina- 
tion. 

Dr. Spurzheim had met w r ith persons in whom the 
organ of theosophy was large, and yet religious feelings 
feeble. He observed that some of these were antiquari- 
ans, others courtiers; in short, that the object of their 
respect was not always a Supreme Being. He suspected, 
then, that the fundamental feeling was not religion, but a 
mere propensity to respect and venerate. He termed it 
the organ of veneration, without specifying, in any manner, 
the thing which it venerates. When joined with the love 
of properly, it may venerate wealth ; with ambition, pow- 
er; with vanity it makes a courtier; with eventuality an 
historian — an antiquarian. Among the organs enumer- 
ated by Dr. Gall, there is one in connexion with visions, 
though none in combination with which, veneration would 
select almighty power and supernatural agency for its 
object. Dr. Spurzheim, knowing how little man can exist 
without the knowledge and worship of a Supreme Being, 
turned his attention to the research of an organ and facul- 
ty which might guide him to that end ; and in fact discov- 
ered one, which he named at first supernaturality, and 
afterwards marvellousness. This faculty directs venera- 
tion towards the worship of one or more supernatural 
beings, the choice and number of which are more select 
and noble, in proportion as the higher faculties are more 
developed and exercised. 



35 

Another proof of what we (phrenologists) consider as 
the superior analytical talent of Dr. Spurzheim, is the dis- 
covery he has made of separate organs, each destined to 
take cognizance of some special physical quality in objects. 
Dr. Gall had found an organ for the perception of color ; 
another for number ; another for place : but these discoveries 
did not lead him to the general conclusion, that all the other 
properties of bodies, as well as their color, number, and place, 
would be bestowed in vain for man, if man had not the facul- 
ties by which he could perceive them. The analogies of the 
science indicated that their situation must be in the vicini- 
ty of the other organs destined to similar ends ; and they 
have all been found in the ciliary ridge. They are — 
size ; momentum, in which is included a very long cata- 
logue of properties, once thought distinct from each other, 
but now known to be in fact but one ; and order. The 
latter Dr. Spurzheim discovered in England, and order 
certainly is a characteristic of the nation. 

The additions which Dr. Spurzheim has made to the 
number of the simple fundamental faculties of human 
beings, not before admitted by Dr. Gall, are, including 
marvellousness, eight. But it is not the number, it is the 
spirit of these modifications which phrenologists principally 
admire. If some persons accuse Dr. Spurzheim of having 
abandoned the Baconian severity of his predecessor, and 
of indulging himself in a priori hypotheses, those very 
conjectures prove the extent of his analytical sagacity. 
To do him justice in this respect, it is indispensable to dis- 
tinguish between inductions and facts. No fact, the exist- 
ence of no faculty or organ, was admitted by him upon 
conjectural evidence. Before he adopted any new power 
of mind, in conjunction with any yet unnoticed cerebral 



36 

development, he waited as rigorously as Gall could do f 
for the result of repeated observation ; but to investigate 
such and such a region of thought, and of the brain — to 
turn his inquiries in this or that direction — he was, 
indeed, guided by his previous reflections and inductions* 
The truth of these time has proved, to his no small hon- 
or — if, indeed, they and all the rest be true; and he has 
the glory, not very common, of anticipating by meditation, 
the prudent march of experiment. Whatever talent Dr. 
Gall may have shown in his earlier observations — how- 
ever acute, and clear, and philosophic he may have been 
in his investigations, physiological and moral, he does not 
seem, at any period of his labors to have been carried for- 
ward by preconceived notions respecting the primitive 
faculties, but to have proceeded from step to step as each 
successive conviction casually led him. This is not meant 
as a reproach to Dr. Gall ; for the march of his mind was, 
perhaps, more steady and secure on that account; but the 
sagacity of Dr. Spurzheim, who, by general reason, fore- 
saw the law of nature before he had proof of it, and after- 
wards proved it, is of a very high order. When metaphy- 
sicians reproached Dr. Gall with his mode of proceeding, 
and with not first determining what the primitive powers 
were, and then seeking out their organs in the brain, his 
constant answer was, 'Do you metaphysicians tell me 
what the primitive faculties are, and I'll find out the cor- 
responding organs.' But this they neither did nor could 
do ; and Gall continued, as some would say, empirically, 
to compare mental manifestations with cerebral develop- 
ment, until he determined their mutual dependence. 

Another part of the system which was not without its 
inconveniences, was its nomenclature. The first observa- 



37 

tions and conclusions of Dr. Gall could be made only in 
extreme cases ; for, when a faculty and its organ are weak 
and small, they could not attract an inexperienced eye, as 
that of Gall, like that of other men, necessarily was, before 
he had become familiar with them. When, indeed, he 
had acquired the habit of observing them, their slightest 
modifications became visible ; but the name which had 
been derived from the exaggeration of the faculty became 
inapplicable. The first determination of one organ was 
made in thieves, of another in murderers ; and the one was 
very naturally called the organ of theft — the other the 
organ of murder. But these faculties exist among man- 
kind in diminished forms, and in various modifications ; 
and to call them constantly by these names would evident- 
ly be an abuse of language. In the use of these terms, 
however, Dr. Gall perseveres : while Dr. Spurzheim has 
adopted more proportionate epithets, calling the one the 
organ of acquisitiveness, from its wish to acquire — a wish 
which, when extreme, and not controlled by the superior 
sentiments and faculties, does prompt to theft; but which, 
when under the guidance of the moral sense, and aided by 
such mental powers as can promote its honest gratification, 
becomes a motive of most conscientious exertion : the 
other he calls destructiveness, implying the very first wish 
of an infant to tear and break an insect or a toy. ' I saw, 5 
says Valeria to Virgilia in Coriolanus, speaking to her of her 
son, ' his father's son, a very pretty boy, 5 — ' I saw him run 
after a gilded butterfly ; and when he caught it, he let it 
go again, and after it again ; and over and over he comes, 
and up again ; catched it again : or whether his fail en- 
raged him, or how 'twas, he did so set his teeth and tear 
it ! Oh, I warrant how he mammocked it ! ' It includes, 
4 



38 

too, the very last measure of crime — murder, and assumes 
every intermediate degree, according to its development 
and its combinations. To call all these by one word cer- 
tainly is not correct, however difficult it might have been 
to do otherwise, as long as the range and functions of a 
faculty were not determined; but the nomenclature of Dr. 
Spurzheim proceeds upon more philosophical views, al- 
though even that has been found subject to some objec- 
tions. Neology is always displeasing, at least until the 
ideas on which it is founded are fully established ; and to 
embrace the entire scope of a faculty in one word is not 
easy, particularly as much yet remains to be settled with 
regard to the metaphysics of the faculties, though their 
general functions are fully determined. But without new 
words new ideas cannot be expressed ; and without new 
ideas mankind rests stationary. Hallowed be the vices 
(the dulcia vitia) of language, which impart a truth un- 
known before ! 

To give the reader materials for judging the state of 
this German candidate for a place in philosophical society, 
and of knowing the two men to whom it owes its birth 
and progress, he is here presented with a diagram of the 
system such as Dr. Gall made, and still makes it; and of 
another comprising Dr. Spurzheim's latest modifications. 
As Dr. Gall has not himself translated his names into 
English, we give them in the original German, with an 
attempt of our own to explain them ; — 

1. Zeugungstrieb — the instinct of generation. 

No. 2. J imgenliebe, Kinderliebe — the love of offspring. 

■j a ^ r,lj[in S licli keit — friendship, attachment. 

NO. 4. Muth, Raufsinn — courage, self-defence. 

No. 5. Wiirgwim— murder, the wish to destroy. 

No. 6. List, Schlauheit, Klugheit — cunning. 



39 

No. 7. Eigenthlimsinn — the sentiment of property. 

No. 8. Stolz, Hochmuth, Herschsucht — pride, self-esteem, 
haughtin 

No. 9. Eitelkeit, Rhumsiiclit, Ehrgeitz — vanity, ambition. 

No. 10. Behuthsamkeit, Vorsicht, Vorsichtigkeit — cautious- 
ness, foresight, prudence. 

No. 11. Sachgedacbtnlss, Erziehuugs-fahigkeit the mem- 
ory of things, educability. 

No. 12. Orts'mu, Raumsinn — local memory. 

No. 13. Personensinn — the memory of persons. 

No. 14. Wortgedachtniss — verbal memory. 

No. 15. Sprachforschungssinn — memory for languages. 
16. Farbensinn — colors. 

No. 17. Tonsinn — musi 

No. 18. ZahlensiDD — numb 

No. 19. Kanstsinn — aptitude for the mechanical arts. 

No. 20. Verg irfsinn — comparative sagacity, 

aptitude for drawing comparisons. 
21. Metaphysischer Tiefsinn — metaphysical depth of 
thought, aptitude for drawing conclusions. 

No. 22. Wits— 

No. 23. Dicbtergeist — poetry. 

No. 24. Gutmtithigkeit, Mitleiden — good-nature, 
inn — mimickry. 

No. 26. Theosophie — theosophy, religion. 

No. 27. Festigkeit — firmi 

Dr. Spurzheim's arrangement of the faculties is com- 
prised in orders, genera, &c. : they are : — 

ORDER I. Feelings, or Effective Faculties. 

Genus I. Propensities: — No. 1. Amativeness. No. 2. Philo- 
genitiveni . 3. Inhabitiveness. No. 4. Adhesiveness. 

No. 5. Combativeness. No. (>. Destructivenees. No. 7. Secre- 
tiveness. No. 8. Acquisitiveness. No. 9. Constructiveuess. 

Genus II. Sentiments :— No. 10. Self-esteem. No. 11. Ap- 
probativeness. No. 12. Cautiousness. 

Genus III. Superior Sentiments: —No. 13. Benevolence. 
No. 14. Veneration. No. 15. Firmness. No. 16. Conscientious- 
ness. No. 17. Hope. No. 18. Marvellousness. No. 19. Ideality. 
No. 20. Mirth fulness, or Gayness. No. 21. Imitation. 

ORDER II. Understanding, or Intellect. External Senses — Feel- 
ing, Taste, Smell, Hearing, Sight. 

Genus II. Perceptive Faculties; the Intellectual Faculties 
which perceive the existence of external Objects and their physi 
cal qualities: — No. 22. Individuality. No. 23. Configuration. 
No. 24. Size. No. 25. Weight and Resistance. No. 26. Color. 



40 

(,im s III. Intellectual Faculties which perceive the Rela- 
tions of external Objects: — No. 27. Locality. No. 28. Calcula- 
tion. No. 29. Order. No. 30. Eventuality. No. 31. Time. No. 
32. Tune. No. 33. Language. 

Genus IV. Reflective Faculties : — No. 34. Comparison. No. 
35. Causality. 

It is thus modified that Dr. Spurzheim has disseminated 
the doctrines of phrenology since he has fixed his residence 
in this island. (Note 3.) 

The attacks upon the science, however, have by no 
means become less virulent during this period ; and its old 
enemy has again entered the lists. The LXXXVIIIth No. 
of the Edinburgh Review opens with an article which pre- 
tends to nothing less than to put down phrenology forever, 
but which the sectaries hold to be a still more pitiful pro- 
duction than any that had preceded it in the same Review. 

In reading this precious article once over, with a pencil 
in our hands, (say the phrenologists) we were induced no 
less than one hundred and fifty-three times to mark some 
passage which struck us as reprehensible, under one or 
other of the following heads: — 1. Ignorance of every 
principle of phrenology, of the situation, size, functions, and 
value of the organs, and of the metaphysics of the phre- 
nologists. 2. Ignorance of the general principles of human 
nature in its widest bearings. 3. Total inaptitude for phi- 
losophical pursuits and general science, and a mind the anti- 
pode of Baconian. 4. Unsound and confused notions upon 
cvrjry system of metaphysics. 5. Wilful misrepresentation 
of facts, doctrines, and opinions, ad libitum. 6. Phrenologi- 
cal facts are never opposed by anti-facts, but by an ipse-dixit; 
by assertions, jokes and quibbles. 7. Some as dull jokes and 
stupid pleasantries as ever were cracked upon the heads of 
our German doctors. Time and space do not allow a 



41 

special notice of this article at present, but until some be- 
nevolent critic shall undertake to give it due castigation, to 
point out all its bad faith, blunders and pretensions, one 
phrase must be noticed as a specimen of the philosophic 
mind of the author (page 296, line 20 to 27). ' If it were 
really true that, &c. it is, in the first place, inconceivable 
that the discovery should have remained to be made in the 
beginning of the 19th century ; and in the second place, 
still more inconceivable, that, after it was made, there 
should be anybody who could pretend to doubt of its reali- 
ty.' Admirable critic ! profound philosopher ! Adieu, 
then, all that has been brought to light since the year 1800, 
together with all that anybody doubts about ! Nay, more, 
for if the critic fixes upon the opening of the present cen- 
tury as the a?ra at which he locks the gate of science, and 
throws the key into a fiery furnace, we will wall it round in 
1700. Some other friend to the progress of truth will 
stifle it in 1600, and so on till the retrogradation of know- 
ledge is complete. And then adieu Vesta, Juno, Pallas, 
and Ceres ; potassium and sodium ; hydrogen and oxygen ; 
steam-engines and mule-jennies ; the discoveries of Newton 
cannot be true, for somebody still doubts about them ; and 
in fine, there is not either truth or knowledge upon earth, 
and none can henceforth ever be disclosed ! 

This article has drawn a reply from Mr. Combe, against 
whose work it was principally directed ; and although this 
phrenologist has said more than is necessary to refute the 
flimsiness of the attack, he has by no means exposed all 
the weak points of his adversary, or held up the production 
to the contempt which it merits. 

The efforts of the Edinbugh Reviewer, however, have 

been completely impotent to stop the spreading torrent of 
4 * 



42 

truth. On the contrary, they have assisted it so much, 
that we (phrenologists) hope he may never cease to write 
against us. About the time when the LXXXVIIIth No. 

of the Edinbugh Review appeared, Dr. Spurzheim visited 
Cambridge, and was received in that seat of exact learning 
with honors seldom bestowed before. By the influence of 
some of the members of that eminent body, the most distin- 
guished for their characters and talents, permission was grant- 
ed to deliver a course of lectures on phrenology in the botani- 
cal lecture-room of the University ; a favor never conferred 
on any who are not members of the establishment. The au- 
dience was most respectable, and increased as the course ad- 
vanced ; till, towards the close, it amounted to 130, among 
whom were 57, partly professors, partly tutors, and fellows 
of different colleges. The attentions paid to Dr. Spurz- 
heim, personally, were most gratifying ; and the impression 
made, not merely by his method of dissecting the brain, but 
by his phrenological doctrines, was as complete a refutation 
of the lame and impotent conclusions of the Edinburgh Re- 
viewer as candor and science could desire. Now the uni- 
versity of Cambridge will generally be held as high au- 
thority as the man who writes that our faculties, viz. the 
love of approbation, acquisitiveness, cautiousness, &:c, 
arise out of the constitution of human society, and not that 
human society is the result of human faculties (page 263, 
last lines) ; and who considers the ascending affections, as 
the love of children for parents, &c. to be as necessary and 
as natural instincts as the love of parents for their offspring 
(page 269.) (Note 4.) 

From Cambridge Dr. Spurzheim proceeded to Bath and 
Bristol ; and the managers of the literary institutions there 
have declared that since those establishments were opened, 



43 

no lecturer had attracted so numerous a class. The Lon- 
don Institution, too, had a weekly lecture, attended by sev- 
eral hundreds of auditors ; and the new mode of dissecting 
the brain was exhibited with entire success at St. Bartholo- 
mews' Hospital. Thus Dr. Spurzheim may deride the 
pert petulance of the ignorant. 

But if the Edinburgh Review has not been able to pre- 
vent the public attention from being directed to phrenolo- 
gy, and convinced by truth, still less has it been able to ar- 
rest the accumulation of facts ; and the XVth number of 
the Phrenological Journal* (page 467), contains — what, 
in a certain slang dialect, would be called such a plumper, 
that nothing softer than the Reviewer's fact-proof cranium 
could resist it, — Mr* Deville's visit to the convict ship 
England, bound with 148 prisoners for New South Wales. 
This zealous practitioner, after examining the convicts, gave 
a memorandum of the inferred characters of each individu- 
al, and of the manner in w r hich the propensities of each 
were likely to manifest themselves. The most desperate 
were accurately pointed out, and one man in particular, 
Robert Hughes, was noted as most dangerous, on account 
of his ferocity and dissimulation. A mutiny, at the head 
of which was this Hughes, was on the point of breaking 
out, and the conduct of every prisoner coincided most ac- 
curately with Mr. Deville's predictions. The records of 
the whole transaction are now officially in the Victualling 

* A Trimestrial publication, as necessary to the lovers of this science 
as the Journal of the Royal Institution, Professor Jameson's or Dr. 
Brewster's Edinburgh Journals, &c. are to the friends of chemistry, 
natural philosophy, &c. This work at present is much superior to 
what it was in the beginning, and contains many very excellent dis- 
sertations on the metaphysics of phrenology, as well as a rich collec- 
tion of undeniable facts. 



44 

Office, and the following is extracted from a letter of Mr. 
Thompson, surgeon to the ship, to whose care the con- 
victs were committed : — 

1 1 have to thank you for your introduction to Deville and phre- 
nology. — Deville is right in every case but one, Thomas Jones ; 
but this man can neither read nor write ; and, being a sailor, he 
was induced to join the conspiracy to rise and seize the ship and 
carry her to South America, being informed by Hughes that he 
would then get his liberty. Observe how Deville has hit the real 
character of Hughes, and I will be grateful to Deville all my life, 
for his report enabled me to shut up in close custody the malcon- 
tents, and arrive here not a head minus, which, without the report, 
it is more than probable I could not have done. All the authori- 
ties here are become phrenologists.' 

Now the man who does not admit that to be a science 
which errs but once in J 48 cases, must have little experi- 
ence of what human science is. The visit to the convict 
ship England is the fair appendix to Dr. Gall's visit to the 
prisons of Germany ; and here, at least, the practical use 
of phrenology cannot be denied. It is known that Mr. De- 
ville has been applied to by some persons in the employ- 
ment of government to examine another convict ship ready 
to sail for New South Wales ; that he has complied with 
the request, and that the report of the surgeon, by which 
his prognostics will be either refuted or confirmed, is daily 
expected. (Note 5.) 

The science being thus brought down to its present con- 
dition, and the phrenologist having closed his pleadings, 
the adverse party must now be introduced ; at the same 
time, for the sake of brevity, the answers shall be given. 
Many of the objections are anatomical, and would fatigue 
the reader ; many of them must be omitted, but the most 



45 

prominent shall be preserved. The works of the authors, 
the Edinburgh and Quarterly Revieivs, the Phrenological 
Transactions and Journals, the Report of the French In- 
stitute, and the answer to it, contain enough to satisfy the 
most curious. 

To every objection that ever has been, or ever can be, 
brought against phrenology, one general answer might be 
given ; and if we (phrenologists) were not very good sort 
of persons, we might dismiss our adversaries with one word : 
• Come to our schools and collections, and observe along 
with us, whether mental manifestations are, or are not, in 
constant proportion to cerebral development ; whether a 
given shape of head is not always accompanied by a cer- 
tain talent and a certain character. If this be not so, we 
are in error. If it be true, all that you can say upon this, 
that, or the other, cannot make it untrue ; and our facts, 
the facts which we compel you to admit, cannot be de- 
stroyed by hypotheses or pre-conceptions. But we will 
still listen to you, in order to show to the world of what 
nature your objections are ; and because we are so strong 
in honesty, that your words pass by us as the idle wind. 

You do not venture to assert, say the anti-phrenologists, 
that so soft a substance as the brain can give its form to the 
skull ; or to maintain that it is not the bone which imprints 
its configuration on the pulpy aggregate. You know, re- 
ply the phrenologists, that the cranium is formed after the 
brain ; that its bones, at first cartilaginous and soft, follow, 
as they become hardened, the structure of the cerebral 
mass, assume its shapes, and very accurately represent its 
hills and hollows. Observation confirms this fact, and you 
yourselves know many analogous to it. Are not the bone? 
of adults often warped from their natural shape by the con- 



46 

stant action of the muscles ; and do not the bones of hy- 
drocephalic skulls expand and recede according to the 
quantity of water contained in the head ? 

You know, say the anti-phrenologists, that the internal 
and the external plates of the bones of the skull are not 
parallel ; consequently the impressions made upon the one 
are not always perceptible upon the other. Hence, then, 
even admitting that the brain gives its form to the internal 
plate, you cannot judge of it externally ; and all your in- 
ductions are false. — We do knew that the plates are not al- 
ways parallel, and that their deviation often amounts to 
one or two tenths of an inch. But the difference in heads 
amounts to one inch, sometimes to two inches; that is to 
say, to as many inches as the deviation from parallelism 
does to tenths of an inch. Now, when you prove that a 
tenth part is equal to the whole, we will admit your objec- 
tion. 

You, continue the opponents, produce the fibrous ap- 
pearance in the white mass cf the brain, by always scrap- 
ing in the same direction with your dissec ting-knife. — Had 
the dissecting-knife teeth, like a comb, there might be 
some plausibility in your remark ; but, whatever be the 
process we employ, — maceration, ebullition, congelation, 
— the fibrous appearance is constantly the same. Now, a 
result obtained by so many different processes must be in 
nature, not in any particular method of proceeding. 

But the great, the overwhelming objections under which, 
with Sir Everard Home* at our head, say, thirdly, the 

Sir Everard Home is accused by phrenologists, 1st, Of not under- 
standing their doctrines ; 2dly, Of wilfully misrepresenting the little 
he does know about them ; 3dly, Of attempting to appropriate to him- 
self some of the discoveries of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, to which he 
has not and could not have the slightest pretensions. 



47 

anti-phrenologists, we shall bury you and your science for- 
ever, although you think that you can shake them to air 
like dew-drops from the lion's mane, are those derived 
from incidents which have happened to different parts of 
the brain ; while the faculties attached to those parts have 
not been diminished or impaired. Innumerable cases are 
quoted of cerebral wounds without any injury to the men- 
tal powers, by surgeons in every age and country. In 
one of these a bullet was found upon the pineal gland, 
after many years innocuous residence there. A boy lost 
a piece of his brain as large as a pigeon's egg, but not a 
jot of his reason. Stones, halberds, pistol-balls, knives, 
stilettos, abscesses, cysts, steatomous tumors, excrescen- 
ces, cavities, have been detected after death ; while, in 
the living subject, no diminution of intellect had been per- 
ceived. Sometimes a fragment of the right, sometimes of 
the left hemisphere ; at others a good lump of the cere- 
bellum has been carried away, and no harm done ; nay, 
the mental powers have been so tenacious in some indi- 
viduals, that they have continued to keep their seat, even 
amid a general ossification of the cerebral mass, or its 
total solution in the waters of hydrocephalus. The au- 
thorities upon which these facts rest are formidable, for 
among them stand the names of Abernethy, Duvernay, 
Earle, J. Hunter, Ambrose Pare, Petit, Pringle, &c, 
with many others, quos nunc describere longum est. 

If, say Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, and their associates, 
all these observations were as correct as their authors state 
them to be, not only phrenology would be subverted ab 
imofundo, but it would be impossible to maintain that the 
brain performed any intellectual functions, or indeed any 
functions except that of terminating the columnar structure 



48 

of man with a round nob on which Quakers hang broad- 
brimmed hats. Were the mass, said to be fibrous, con- 
verted to bone, without a loss of any faculty — vital, ani- 
mal, intellectual ; were it really liquid, and addled, as it 
then might be, and no thought or action weakened, this 
surely is the inevitable consequence. But the vague in- 
definite manner in which all these examples are produced, 
save the head and its contents from the imputation of being 
useless appendages, and give phrenology a chance of a 
little longer life than its opponents wish. In order to 
ascertain whether an injury done to any material organ is 
followed by the disease of any function, the direct method 
is to observe whether the function attached to that organ 
is diseased or not. Thus let locomotion be supposed to 
depend upon the soleus maximus ; to a certain this, we 
should observe whether, when this muscle is injured, the 
power of locomotion be impaired or not. The same pro- 
cess should be followed with the brain. If an ounce or 
two of the organ of cautiousness be carried away, as in 
one case it seemed to have been, we should not examine 
whether the faculty of music, of eventuality, had been di- 
minished or increased, but whether the poor patient were 
more or less cautious than he was before. If we confine 
our inquiry to faculties which do not belong to the part 
affected of the brain, we shall obtain as satisfactory an- 
swers as we should if we were to conclude that, because 
smell and taste were not directly impaired when the 
abductor oculi, or the constrictor oris, is cut across, the 
patient suffered no injury but pain ; or that, because he 
could still walk and hear, he could turn the globe of the 
eye outwards, or purse up his mouth as well as ever. 
But this, say the anti-phrenologists, is begging the ques- 



49 

tion, answer Drs. Gall and Spurzheim ; it is merely 
assuming, for a moment, the fact which we wish to de- 
monstrate, in order the more readily to come to a conclu- 
sion ; for, if the diminution of the faculty does not ac- 
company the injury done to the organ, we will cease to 
say that such is the cerebral seat of cautiousness, of music, 
&ic. ; and if, by the same mode, what we have asserted of. 
each portion of the brain be disproved, we give up phre- 
nology forever. What we do maintain is, that our prede- 
cessors and opponents did not possess the due means of 
observing the fact which they have stated ; for, instead of 
looking for the faculties which we attach to the injured 
parts above quoted, they endeavor to find there, not mere- 
ly powers which do not belong to those parts, but powers 
which we do not allow to exist in man as simple funda- 
mental faculties — perception, memory, judgment, imag- 
ination, &lc. These, indeed, as understood by the doctors 
of the old school, may very well survive a partial lesion of 
the brain. We say, too, that those cases have not been 
adduced against us with fairness, and we give an example 
of this. Dr. Ferriar quotes the case of the Due de Guise, 
mentioned by Ambrose Pare : ' A lance entered under 
the right eye, and came out at the neck, between the ear 
and the vertebrae; a piece of the steel remained there.' 
So says Pare ; and, in that direction the brain could hardly 
have been touched. But Dr. Ferriar says it entered 
above the eye. Besides Pare never says one word either 
about brain or faculty. 

If the brain, say the phrenologists, be one organ, the or- 
gan of mind, then mind must be injured exactly in the same 
proportion as the brain is injured ; that is to say, if one-tenth 
of the brain be destroyed, then one-tenth of each mental 
5 



50 

power — perception, memory, judgment, &c, must be 
destroyed along with it. Now we request the old meta- 
physicians to prove this ; while we most satisfactorily ac- 
count for the loss of one of our acknowledged innate facul- 
ties, when all the rest remain entire, by admitting a plurali- 
ty of organs. And as to the non-destruction of a faculty, 
even when its organ on one side of the head has totally dis- 
appeared, we explain it as we do the continuance of the pow- 
er of vision in a man who of two eyes has lost one. Eve- 
ry organ, every member of the human body is double, and 
has long been acknowledged to be so. The fact has been 
doubted, only since it became necessary to oppose phre- 
nology. 

The plurality of the organs is in one sweeping condem- 
nation totally denied by the anti-phrenologists, while the 
assertors of the doctrine pretend to support it by many ar- 
guments. 1st, The analogy between the brain and the 
other portions of the nervous system declare that the for- 
mer, like the latter, must be composed of parts, each of 
which has its separate functions. 2dly, In taking a large 
view of the subject, and overlooking some partial anomalies, 
the brain is found to become more complicated in every 
class of animals, in proportion as that class stands higher in 
the scale of intellect. Thus, beginning with insects, fishes, 
proceeding upwards through birds to mammalia, through 
the most sagacious quadrupeds to man, this viscus is aug- 
mented by the addition of new parts. Some animals, in- 
deed, have one portion greater, others another, according to 
their natures ; but the number increases, as do the facul- 
ties, till in the most intellectual of all they become the most 
numerous. Even in the individuals of the human species, 
proportionate differences are observable ; and whoever 






51 

studies the heads of Bacon and of an idiot, must become 
half a phrenologist. 3dly, The cerebral development 
takes place in all animals exactly in the regions where the 
faculties for which he is the most distinguished reside. 
4thly, The different parts of the brain grow not simultane- 
ously, but one after another ; the growth of each part is in- 
variably accompanied by the development of its concomi- 
tant faculty ; and both organ and faculty are developed ac- 
cording to the demands of nature, at the various periods 
of our existence. Thus, in children,, the perceptive facul- 
ties gain strength before the reflective faculties, because we 
must collect knowledge before w ? e can reason upon it. 
5thly, Intense application does not fatigue all the faculties, 
but only that which is in action, and we repose it by chang- 
ing the object of our study. When the organ of number 
has been over-exercised by calculation, the organ of tune 
may yet be quite fresh, and we may be as well disposed to 
hear or to make music, as if no part of the brain were wea- 
ry. Thus it is that gentle descents and risings in a road, 
as they bring different sets of muscles successively into ac- 
tion, are more advantageous than a dead level. Thus, too, 
change of posture rests the body. Gthly, When, by the 
over-excitation of an organ or faculty, monomania is in- 
duced, a cure is sometimes performed by exciting the ac- 
tion of another organ or faculty, and thus procuring rest to 
die inflamed organ. 7thly, A faculty is injured whenever 
its organ is diseased, and the use of a faculty has been re- 
stored by restoring health to the organ. Topical applica- 
tions to a part of the head have brought back the healthful 
action of the mental power attached to it. 8thly, The 
states of sleeping, waking, dreaming, and somnambulism 
can be satisfactorily explained only in the hypothesis of a 



52 

plurality of organs. We regret that the space allotted to 
article, already very long, prevents us from offering the 
phrenological theory of these interesting phenomena. 

But the objections in which British readers are most like- 
ly to take a part, are those founded upon fatalism, material- 
, and atheism. If, say the anti-phrenologists, you attach 
the powers of intellect, the feelings, the passions, to the 
shape and organization of the body, that shape and that or- 
ganization are decrees of fate. Weak, finite beings, men 
are no longer masters of their thoughts and actions, but bow 
before the mass of matter that composes them, as the reed 
before the storm. If you assert that we think and feel by 
means of material organs, then matter is our soul, and all 
the properties of that immortal essence are corruption, 
death, annihilation. If these be the laws of nature which 
you expound, then there may be no God, there is need of 
no God, and your system is as dreary and desolating as the 
worst that ever attempted to plunge mankind in cheerless 
scepticism, to root out hope and reason from our creed. 

To all this, and much more, phrenologists reply : Our 
doctrine does not in the least alter the questions of fatalism 
and materialism, but leaves them exactly where it found 
them. If you admit a Creator, you must admit him omnip- 
otent ; and, among the attributes of universal power, you 
I insert omniscience. That the Almighty reads the 
Iboughts of our hearts before we form them, that he knows 
what every one of his creatures is before he has sent h;m 
into the world, is the inevitable consequence of omniscience. 
The spirit, the essence of all things, flow from his will ; and, 
without it, nothing can be. Now, whether his pleasure be 
that good and evil, that the mingled nature of man should 
be inherent in human organization, or should exist hide- 






53 

pendently of it, the fact of their existence is constant ; the 
means alone are different. Whether it be by the fibres of 
his brain, or by his essential nature, that the created being 
becomes the perpetrator of harm, harm is not more or less 
his act — his lot. Whatever is is right. Whatever is is 
by the will of God. If the will of God be fate, every doc- 
trine which admits a God endowed with will, as ruler of 
the universe, is fatalism ; and divines and moralists are fa- 
talists as we are. If, too, the influence of the Creator over 
human thoughts and actions be fatalism, it is fatalism, whe- 
ther exercised by spirit or by matter. 

But it never was in our minds, continue Drs. Gall and 
Spurzheim, to say that this influence resided in matter, or 
that any mental faculty was substantial. We have, indeed, 
discovered innate powers in man, and found the organs by 
means of which these innate powers are manifested. But 
we did not, as you allege, ever confound the faculty with 
the organ. The faculty belongs to the soul, the organ to 
the body, and until the soul and body be confounded, the 
faculty and its organ must remain distinct. The muscles, 
with the bony tubes which stretch them out, and which, in 
their turn, they move at command, are no more the will to 
move the faculty which causes motion, than is the organ of 
benevolence, benevolence. The string which vibrates in 
the harp, the hand which draws it out of the straight line, 
and lets it go again, are not the note of music which we 
hear ; neither is the organ of tone, tone. In this we have 
advanced no more than many philosophers have done be- 
fore us, who have considered the body as the instrument of 
the soul ; and mind to depend on organization. Solomon, 
St. Paul, the Fathers of the Church, Heathen Philosophers, 
Christian Moralists, all have attributed a material residence, 
5* 



54 

an instrument to the soul. Some who called soul the pow- 
er by which the body grew and was maintained, irritability, 
life, supposed it to be diffused in every limb and artery, in 
every atom which composed us. Some divided the soul, 
and allotted to its parts different regions, analogous to its 
particular functions in those parts ; placing some of it in 
the thorax, some in the abdomen, some in one part of the 
head, some in another. Pythagoras, Plato, fixed it in the 
brain ; the Stoics and Aristotle, in the heart ; Erasistratus in 
the menynges ; Herophilus in the great ventricles of the 
brain ; Servetto in the aqueduct of Silvius ; Auranti in the 
third ventricle ; Van Helmont in the stomach ; Descartes 
in the pineal gland ; Schellhammer at the origin of the 
spinal marrow ; Drelincourt in the cerebellum ; Lancisi in 
the corpus callosum, or in the great commissure : Willis in 
the corpora striata ; Vieussens in the centrum ovale ; Acker- 
man in what he calls the Sinneshiigel, or tubercules of the 
senses ; Psorri in a very subtle, fragrant juice, which, ac- 
cording to him, is found in the brain ; and we should not be 
surprised to hear, one of these days, that some peripatetic 
had set it off full gallop on the sella turcica. All that is 
proved by this is, that we know nothing of the nature of 
the soul, or of its residence ; while we see that every phi- 
losophy has attached it to some material organ. Yet none 
of these are accused of materialism ; and why then should 
we, who have attempted no bolder change than merely to 
proclaim what are the innate faculties of man, and what the 
organs by means of which they act, be accused of saying 
that the soul is matter ? We never said so. We no more 
say this, than do the anatomists, who teach that motion de- 
pends on the apparatus of nerves and muscles, say that 
motion is matter. In our whole doctrine there is not a 



55 

tenet which alters the position either of fatalism, or of ma- 
terialism ; yet futile minds accuse us of wishing to establish 
both these heresies. 

But, we might say to you anti-phrenologists, suppose that 
our physiology of the brain does lead to those conclusions, 
what will you say if our theory be true ? What we show 
you are facts ; what you oppose to us are opinions. And 
what do you know about fatalism and materialism ? Who has 
revealed to you what they are ? You scale the heavens too 
soon when you dare to speak of them, for your best know- 
ledge of them ever must be ignorance. You would interpret 
the laws of omnipotence according to your own weakness, 
and make infinity finite ; yet you are blind to what your eyes 
can leach you. Come with us, and see whether what we say 
be true ; and then you must confess that what you once be- 
lieved is all imagination and hypothesis. You will own that 
you never understood, that it is not given to you ever to un- 
derstand, what fatalism means, or what is materialism, any 
more than to know the nature of your own soul. These 
are questions not merely of human abstraction ; they involve 
considerations still higher, and touch upon the essence of 
the Divinity. The most unfortunate objections for our an- 
tagonists that ever were started, are those of fatalism and 
materialism ; and the day is near when all men shall say, 
1 How could such absurdity ever have been spoken ?' 

A question may now be put to phrenologists, which, in 
a popular point of view, is the most trying of all. What is 
the use of your science, supposing it to be true? It may 
be pretty, it may be ingenious, and it is amusing enough, 
in a circle of bald heads, to pry into hidden dispositions, 
and hold an infallible key to mens's minds. But cui bono 
all this; and have you attained no greater end from all your 



56 

studies ? Certainly, answer these strange folks the phre- 
nologists, we have attained much greater ends, the great- 
est, perhaps, that ever have been attempted in anthropolo- 
gy ; and, if we have not already worn out your patience, 
we will recount to you what we promise shall be the result 
of our discoveries. 

In the first place, then, truth. We hold it to be in 
absolute contradiction with the nature of things, that a 
truth can exist, the knowledge of which is not uefusl to 
mankind. The earth contains no poison, the air no pesti- 
lence, which Providence has not at the same time endow- 
ed with some principle which mankind will, some day or 
other, turn to use. All is not, indeed, discovered at 
once ; but let us look at the most deleterious substances 
known in nature or in art, and see the murderous arsenic, 
how useful it is in hardening types, and thus ministering to 
a free press; in forming specula for reflecting telescopes; 
in making glass; in dyeing; in printing cotton stuffs; nay, 
in pharmacy, as a tonic. How many lives might a pound 
of opium not destroy; how many pangs may it not allay? 
Neither does any substance exist which can do no harm. 
If a patient will submit to the trial, he will find himself as 
effectually killed by a sufficient quantity of boiled chicken, 
as of corrosive sublimate ; and the ' question a Veau ' could 
be made as unpleasing as any other species of torture, and 
would still be so were that water Tokay. What we give 
you is truth ; truth, with its bad and with its good, like 
all other human truths ; but in which the useful portion 
far exceeds, not only the noxious, but even that which 
malevolence can turn to evil, or folly make ridiculous. 

Secondly, The knowledge of individual character is of 
no mean interest in the life we lead, as it must give securi- 



57 

ty to social intercourse, and make communication prompt 
and easy. Physiognomy has been thought of some advan- 
tage to this end ; but how much more will not a science, 
which has fixed and certain principles, contribute to it. 
Physiognomy is but the expression which the countenance, 
and perhaps some other parts of the body, derive from the 
habitual state of the mind and heart, from the predominant 
feelings and passions; but it goes no deeper. Many pow- 
ers which we discover have no tongue for the physiogno- 
mist ; neither can he lay down a body of doctrine by 
which he can communicate his acquired knowledge. 
With him all is tact, mere tact, fugitive and changeable as 
the fancies of men and women, and more vague than 
meteorology. But we proceed by rule and compass, 
armed with all that can repel fantastic feelings ; we judge 
by principles which can be explained. Let any man 
read the works of our doctors, and those of Lavater; and 
he will see that the two modes cannot bear comparison. 
Neither did physiognomy ever pretend to tell what were 
the original propensities of a man, much less to indicate 
the simple fundamental faculties of our nature. If, then, 
some credit was given to this most empirical mode of pro- 
nouncing, how much more does not our system deserve to 
be approved and trusted, since we can, by surer precepts, 
teach profounder truths ? It may be said, that phrenology 
may create repulsive feelings among men, by revealing 
hidden defects; but will it not reveal hidden virtues also? 
And unless the false and gloomy system be admitted, that 
vice is more general than virtue, phrenology must publish 
more good than evil in the human species. Besides, when 
some defect is seen, is there not seen in the same head 
(unless it be one of those unfortunate cases, so rare in the 



53 

world,) the quality which corrects it ? In a word, phrenol- 
ogy will paint men as they are, and that alone is impor- 
tant , but whether it brings to light more virtue or more 
vice, must depend, not upon it, but upon mankind. Nay, 
more ; human virtue is likely to be increased by it, for 
men will be convicted of their faults upon phrenological 
evidence, from which no self-love, no flattery, can protect 
them. They will be instructed, too, of the means which 
Providence has given them to balance those faults ; and, 
joined to destructiveness, for instance, they may find benev- 
olence, or justice, or religion, to stop their murderous 
hand. In some heads, it is said, no good is found — no 
weight to counterpoise a vicious propensity. It may be 
so ; but independently of every system, of every hypothe- 
sis, Thurtell was a murderer. — The will of God be 
done ! 

Nothing that ever was devised by man has put in his 
hands so powerful an instrument to know himself, as that 
which we (phrenologists) have given him ; for, if he be- 
lieves in us, he cannot deny the evidence of his own or- 
ganization. The first key to unlock the hearts of others 
is that which opens our own ; and to know whether we 
judge our neighbor fairly or not, we should measure the 
quantity of our own feelings which we mix up in the 
judgment. But from this acquaintance with ourselves and 
others may result the greatest benefit that could accrue to 
social intercourse, mutual indulgence. When we recollect 
that each has his own particular organization, as w T e have 
ours : that it is not easy to control the dispositions which 
nature has implanted thus in our minds ; that we have de- 
fects as insupportable, perhaps, as any that we encounter, 
we shall be more disposed to bear with others' foibles, that 



59 

they may pardon ours ; and mutual necessity will make 
us tolerant. There are, indeed, those who have reproach- 
ed our system with inspiring indulgence even for vice ; 
and say, that hy it, it is unjust to punish the criminal, since 
he only obeys the impulse of organization. But w*e must 
here distinguish between feelings and actions : for the for- 
mer no man can be taxed ; for the latter all are accounta- 
ble to society ; and as to destiny, we have shown that to 
be among the impenetrable mysteries of Providence. 

Another influence which phrenology, say its advocates, 
will have on individuals, is the mode of treating mania. 
The whole theory of insanity has hitherto been much too 
vague, and all its affections and appearances have been 
considered only as inflammatory and as chronic. Some 
practitioners, indeed, more happy than others, have struck 
out particular modes of treatment, which have been crowd- 
ed with occasional success. But the knowledge of the in- 
nate faculties, and of their seat in the brain, must general- 
ize the hygiene of mental derangement. In erotic mania, 
in the mania brought on by the excessive development or 
excitation of the organ and faculty of ambition, of acquisi- 
tiveness, of cautiousness, physicians will direct their prac- 
tice immediately to the part affected and to its functions ; 
and not, as is now too often the case, apply, as it were, a 
topic to the leg for a disease in the arm, and scrape away 
the tibia to extirpate a caries in the humerus. 

A still higher function of phrenology, as it relates to man- 
kind at large, not merely to the few unfortunates who la- 
bor under malady, is its empire over education. The vast 
error, that men are alike fitted for all professions, that all 
can turn their mental powers to the same account and prof- 
it, has done much injury to the education of individuals, 



60 

and consequently to the general progress of the world. 
But our science (continue Drs. Gall and Spurzheim) shows 
that all men are not alike fitted for all purposes; that, in 
one, a receptiveness for musical, in another for mathemat- 
ical instruction predominates ; that some are endowed with 
the power of prompt perception, and others with that of ab- 
struse induction ; in short, that every walk of social life has 
its destined votaries. Now, it is to be hoped, that when 
parents have the authority of phrenology for the talents and 
disposition of their children, they will cultivate those which 
nature has made the most salient in their cranium, and not 
torment them with studies for which they have no sufficient 
organ. Should one of their boys, in defiance of birch-rods 
and ferulas, neglect his vocabulary to carve his taw, or cut 
out wagon-wheels with his penknife, let them consult one 
of us, and we will tell them that all the betula of Windsor 
forest will not make a scholar of him ; we will show that, 
not being one of the ox-eyed, he can but ill remember 
words ; but that having a fulness in the frontal bone, just 
above the spheno-temporal suture, he may become an ex- 
pert mechanic, an engineer, a mill-wright, or a Watt; that 
it is in vain to thrust in through the gluteus maximus what 
cannot penetrate the head ; and that, flog him as they may, 
his propria quce maribus will always be covered with chips 
and chisels. In the same manner we will teach them to 
oppose the bad propensities of youth, by withholding ali- 
ment from self-love, from obstinacy, from cruelty, and by 
cherishing benevolence, justice, piety ; and correcting levi- 
ty by gently stimulating the reflecting faculties. We can 
tell, loo, why many a school-boy, who has carried away 
prizes and rewards, sinks into an ordinary adult ; and why 
more than one dunce has burst out like a luminary in later 



61 

years ; for we can show the organs which make a brilliant 
infant and a dull man, and those which are of little use at 
Eton, but most essential to a statesman or a philosopher. 
Neither shall we allow ourselves to be imposed upon by 
any urchin's cunning, or mistake ill-will and idleness for 
inability. The marks by which we judge are registered by 
nature, indelible, immutable, and clear to every eye. 

But individual education is a very small portion of the 
good which we aspire to teach — (these people really are 
mad ; their ambition is unbounded !) We will educate na- 
tions ; and nothing can prevent us from fulfilling this mis- 
sion, but the destruction of the human race. We will tell 
the men of every country their faults and their vices, their 
virtues and their talents, and hold them up, as clearly as 
size and form can be held up, to the notice of mankind. 
None shall escape us. Already, not only Europeans, — 
English, French, Germans, Italians, — the most enlighten- 
ed, the most refined of men have we scrutinized, but Asiat- 
ics under every latitude, Africans thirsting on both sides of 
the equator, Americans as wild as Africans, as civilized as 
Europeans. We have told truths to all, and pointed out 
the means of improvement. At this moment, indeed, they 
may not listen to us, but the day will come when they will 
advance but by us. To us is given to decide the great 
question of original national propensities, as ot individual 
propensities, and to show how they may be expanded or 
repressed. We shall instruct rulers how to govern, and 
subjects how to submit, and strike the just balance — as 
various as the races and the regions of the earth — be- 
tween the sovereign and the people ; and the first time that 
we inspire oppressed reason to demand her rights, and to 
demand no more — that we teach men how much liberty 
6 



62 

they can bear, how much privation they must yet endure, 
we shall have our full reward. (Note 6.) 

So much for the practical pretensions of our science. 
The reader must now hear our claims to speculative superi- 
ority. Dr. Spurzheim has said, and been most heartily 
abused for saying — and, if the science be false, most hearti- 
ly deserves to be abused for saying, — that the whole phi- 
losophy of the mind must be entirely changed ; that the 
study of man in this respect will become a new study, &lc. 
In this dictum — most noble or most arrogant, according to 
events — we (phrenologists) concur, with the loudest cheers ; 
and in this, do we say, lies the stupendous monument of 
our science. Since the earliest records of philosophy, sages 
have speculated on the heart, the mind, the passions, and 
the understanding. For more than three thousand years 
systems have flashed, and disappeared without leaving a 
trace. Some of these, indeed, were abundantly ingenious ; 
but were defective in that which alone can make them last- 
ing, truth. It would be curious to examine the hypotheses 
which have grown up, one after another, in the fertile soil 
of fancy, Arabian, Chinese, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, 
Roman, and modern European, and to see how specious 
and how futile all have been. Not one of them was found- 
ed on anything but conjecture; and, until Gall appeared, 
it was not supposed that mental philosophy, that psychology, 
ever could have any other basis. But Gall proceeded en- 
tirely upon fact ; and those who accuse his system as im- 
aginative, will probably call the ■ Farie Queene' an historic- 
al poem, and ' Lear ' an algebraical tragedy. He stalked 
from brain to brain, from organ to organ, and trampled con- 
jecture under foot. « The man of skulls ' — aye, Mr. Edin- 
burgh Reviewer, the boy of skulls — endowed in truth, with 



63 

not less imagination than his predecessors, had yet more love 
of fact than they had ; and this single faculty has placed 
him above them all. It is, indeed, most wondrous, that the 
catalogue of the innate faculties of man should have escaped 
the grey-haired philosophers of every age and climate, and 
that its first fold should have been opened to a child of 
nine years old, who in maturity unrolled it all, except a 
leaf or two, which he left to his followers. Such a discov- 
ery, had it been made by a man after so long concealment, 
and so many attempts to accomplish it, would have been 
wonderful ; but let U^iever be forgotten that it was the 
work, and not the accidental work, of an infant. 

We (phrenologists) do not say that Dr. Gall has invented 
the faculties which he attributes to man, or that he even 
discovered them all. Many of them had a place in ethical 
science before they were announced by him. Philoso- 
phers, the most remote, from admitting the connexion be- 
tween the brain and the mind, from adopting innate differ- 
ences of character, have yet allowed many of the powers 
which we have recognized, to be simple and fundamental. 
Thus Mr. D. Stewart, who attributes so much to habit, 
does not deny an inborn bias to self-esteem, to friendship, 
nay to pugnacity, as in the case of sudden resentment ; he 
admits, too, conscientiousness, under the much more phi- 
losophical name of the moral sense. Many more moralists 
have done the same, as Cudworth, Hutcheson, Reid, Brown, 
&c, but still they went on no foundation but conjecture. 
Neither had they the slightest notion of forming a body of 
doctrine like that which our masters teach. Others again 
have asserted, that all the disparity between man and man 
resulted from later circumstances, for nature had made the 
individuals of the species alike ; and systems of education 



64 

have been most erroneously founded on this opinion. The 
British philosopher who, in our days, stands the most re- 
mote from our doctrine in his philosophy of mind is Mr. D. 
Stewart ; whose theory, on this very account, must be the 
first to become obsolete; and whose works — to the great 
impoverishment of English literature, — will be remember- 
ed only for the beauty of their style, and the benevolence 
of their philosophy. He who has come the nearest to it is 
the late Dr. Tho. Brown ; and, strange to say, many traces 
of opinions like ours are to be found in some papers publish- 
ed since 1819, in the Edinburgh Kff/f^, and still more in 
others inserted about the sam€^ume in the Quarterly Re- 
view, insomuch, that of one of these, (Art. XII. of vol. 25,) 
it has been said, 6 The observations of the reviewer are so 
strictly phrenological, as almost to tempt me to believe that 
he is a phrenologist in disguise. 5 (See Phren. Journal, No. 
VIII., page 603, note.) 

It has already been mentioned — to the great dismay of 
all sober-minded readers, — that we (phrenologists) had 
entirely rejected the hum-drum faculties of perception, 
memory, imagination ; which mental philosophers have so 
long been discussing. It must now be added, that taste and 
judgment — this the reader will easily credit, — have been 
turned adrift along with the rest ; that attention, associa- 
tion, are not simple fundamental powers ; that passion is a 
resident, not in the heart, but in the brain ; that pain and 
pleasure, joy and grief, are affections of the innate facul- 
ties, not faculties; that sympathy is the unison of one or 
more faculties in different persons, &c. It would be as 
long to detail the philosophical principles of phrenology, as 
to dissect all the brains of the Royal College of Physi- 
cians : it is indispensable, nevertheless, not to pass them by 
in utter silence. 



65 

No mode or action, no quality of mind, do we contend, 
can be considered as a simple fundamental faculty, if it has 
not an organ in the brain. Now perception, memory, imagi- 
nation, with all the above enumerated, have no cerebral seat ; 
nay, they can have no cerebral seat, because not one among 
them is one. Perception is of as many kinds as there are kinds 
of objects of which it can take cognizance. These kinds are 
determined by the intellectual faculties, which are found to 
exist in the brain and mind. Thus there is a perception 
of time, and a perception of place ; a perception of color, 
of order, of number, of weight ; and the day is forgotten 
when it was not known that a person who has a very live- 
ly perception of one of these, may be totally deprived of 
the perception of the others. It has always been allowed 
that a painter who estimates colors most accurately, may 
not estimate number, and there may be most profound al- 
gebraists without a feeling of melody. Seeing, then, that 
perception is thus necessarily divisible into many parts, one 
of the most extraordinary instances of the laziness of the 
human mind, which, when it falls into a rut, seems incapa- 
ble for centuries of rising out of it, is, that perception should 
ever have been considered as a mental element. Some 
philosophers, indeed, have attempted to resolve the difficul- 
ty, by saying, that chance directs the first current of our 
perceptions, and that habit confirms it. But chance must 
then be busy with us at a very early moment; and habits 
must be contracted in our mother's womb. Every nurse 
at the Foundling Hospital knows this; and that differences 
of individual dispositions precede the possibility of habit. 
But even admitting habit, still the fact, that perception is 
as various as the kinds of things perceptible, stands as 

firmly as before ; and perception is not, cannot be, a simple 
6* 



66 

fundamental faculty. The same reasoning is good with re- 
gard to memory. Memories which are most active, most 
retentive on some subjects, on others are relaxed. One 
man remembers facts, who forgets dates ; another recol- 
lects faces and not names ; some never lose from their 
minds the places where they have been, yet have no pow- 
er to recall a tune ; therefore, memory is not a simple 
fundamental faculty. In the same manner, had Milton 
taken it into his fancy to imagine fluxions, it is probable 
that he never would have put a dot upon his % or his ' y ; 
neither would Newton have produced Adam, Eve, or Sa- 
tan. Handel never could have been a Rubens ; or Michael 
Angelo a Mozart. Imagination, the creative power of mind, 
then, is not one ; and of these three faculties, which were 
the great battle-horses of all metaphysicians down to Gall, 
not one has an independent existence as a simple funda- 
mental power of mind. 

What then, are perception, memory, and imagination, for 
surely they have an existence somewhere ? Certainly 
intellectual faculty has its perception, its memory, and its 
imagination ; and these have complete and full existence as 
modes and qualities of every simple fundamental power of 
intellect. They are modes of action, and the explanation 
which follows will make their functions palpable. 

Let a series of numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, be presented to 
the eye, the organ of that external sense which takes cog- 
nizance of all that is visible, and the first thing it does is to 
see the series of numbers which is thus communicated to 
the mind, and perceived by it. For this operation no great 
effort of intellect is necessary, and it constitutes the first, 
the least complicated act of the faculty which receives 
the impression of number. Let these numbers be now 
withdrawn from the organ of sight; if any traces of 



67 

them remain, those traces are not pictured upon the retina, 
but upon the the mind; and some stronger effort is re- 
quired to call them back after they have disappeared, 
than to perceive them when they stood before us. This 
is a second and higher operation of intellect than mere 
perception: — it is memory ; and that memory is above 
perception in the mental scale is evident, for in idiots, in 
drivellers, in the lower animals, perception often remains 
vigorous when memory fades. Let the person who has 
seen these numbers be now requested to transpose them, 
to repeat them, not in the order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, but in any 
other order ; it is clear that, unless he remembers them, 
his attempt must be vain. But should he be able to recall 
them to his mind, he may. by a new effort, throw 7 them 
into a different order, thus, 4, -2, 5, 1, 3, or into any other 
order: he may diminish or add to them: he may sub- 
. divide, or multiply them, and produce an infinity of 
new combinations. In these operations he is compelled 
to spin from his own mind. Perception, indeed, collected 
the materials, and memory furnishes them anew out of her 
store-house; but all the shapes into which he throws them 
are the devices of his own understanding. The act which 
performs all this is imagination ; and the tension of mind 
is greater in imagination than in memory. 

From this, then, it follows, that the first degree af activi- 
ty in the organ of number was to perceive the series of 
numbers; a second and a higher degree of activity, was 
to remember them ; a third and a still higher, was to pro- 
duce new forms with them. In the same manner let a 
painter's pallet be shown to one man, he will perceive the 
colors ; let it be shown to another, he will perceive and 
remember them ; let it be put into the hands of a Titian, 



68 

and the result will be a San Pietro Martire. One man 
may hear the notes of the gamut, another may remember 
tones and tunes; Weber will compose the Hunter's 
Chorus in the Freischiitz. The activity of the faculty of 
color, of tone, produces these differences ; and so it is 
with every faculty of the mind. Phrenology, then, does 
not annihilate perception, memory, or imagination; it 
denies their existence as simple fundamental faculties, but 
it assigns them a place as attributes of every intellectual 
faculty. Every intellectual faculty perceives, every intel- 
lectual faculty remembers, every intellectual faculty ima- 
gines. No faculty can remember if it has not perceived ; 
no faculty can imagine if it has not remembered : percep- 
tion is, then, the basis of all the operations of every intel- 
lectual faculty. It may be objected to this system, that 
memory and imagination are not in constant proportions in 
different minds ; that one man who has a powerful recol- 
lection of events, of tones, of colors, cannot combine or 
unite them in such a manner as to imagine new produc- 
tions ; while another, endowed with the most vivid power 
of re-production, has a relaxed and feeble recollection of 
his past perceptions ; whereas, if the system just expound- 
ed were true, one degree of memory should always be ac- 
companied by its corresponding portion of imagination. 

In drawing conclusions upon these qualities of mind, the 
distinctions just made must henceforth be kept in view, 
viz., that there are as many kinds of memory, as many 
kinds of imagination, as there are perceptive faculties. Is 
it true that memory and imagination in these cases are so 
disproportionate in quantity as in quality? Does not this 
apparent error often arise from mistaking memory in one 
shape, for imagination in another? From confounding, 



69 

for instance, the memory of words with the imagination of 
events ; or the imagination of tone with the memory of 
color? From not knowing that neither memory nor im- 
agination is an element of the mind, but an attribute of 
many of its elements? Future observations must clear up 
this doubt; for all that have been made before the true 
nature of the attributes of mind was known, must be con- 
sidered as equivocal. 

Besides, supposing — continue the phrenologists — mem- 
ory not to be always in the same proportion with imagina- 
tion in the same faculty, viz., that one man has a strong 
memorv and a weak imagination for numbers, while anoth- 
er has those attributes in reversed proportions in the same 
faculty; the fact, if ascertained, is easily accounted for by 
the re-action of every (acuity upon its fellows. No power 
of mind can, for a single instant, act alone, much less de- 
termine an habitual state ; and when the higher sentiments, 
as marvellousness, ideality, mirthfulness, or the reflective 
qualities, as comparison, causality, are very active, they 
may impart their stimulus to the memory of numbers, and 
raise it nearer to imagination than it would be if it were 
dully handed over to the propensities or the senses. Cer- 
tain it is that, without memory, there is no imagination. 
Memory is the mine from which imagination takes the 
ores that fancy shapes and taste refines, to gild its airy 
castles. Had the good genius of the magic lamp not 
perceived, not remembered all the elements of which 
fairy artists fabricate their spells, Aladdin never could have 
built a palace for his bride. 

Having despatched the good old-fashioned faculties of 
perception, memory and imagination, with as little cere- 
mony as we should our grandmother's high-backed, patch^ 



70 

work arm-chair, we (phrenologists) proceed to the demo- 
lition of some other antiquated powers, and assert that, if 
they trust us, mankind have neither judgment nor taste. 
Judgment is no. faculty ; but every faculty of intellect has 
its judgment. Hence it is correct and common to say 
such a man is a good judge of music, such another of 
painting, fee. ; and this could not be so, had not the one 
the organs of time and tone, the other those of form and 
color duly developed ; and were they not moreover en- 
dowed, not merely with the power of perceiving, remem- 
bering, and imagining, but with another power different 
from them : — these are modes of quantity. The one now 
under consideration is a mode of quality, and entirely inde- 
pendent of the others. Before we can judge, indeed, we 
must perceive ; and, if we wish to judge an object once per- 
ceived, but no longer present, we must be able to call it 
back to our minds ; but perception alone is sufficient to af- 
ford the judgment matter for its exercise. 

Beside these special judgments, there is another judg- 
ment useful in the affairs of life, constantly talked of under 
the plain, round name of common- sense ; and another, the 
highest of all, metaphysical judgment. But these and eve- 
ry species of judgment are explicable in the same manner 
as the special judgments, and are modes of quality belong- 
ing to the faculties which preside over the various depart- 
ments of mind. Thus, as the power of judging melody re- 
sides in the organ of tune, so does the power of judging the 
value of metaphysical speculations reside in the organs of 
comparison and causality, the highest and grandest of all 
the human faculties. But the metaphysical faculties would 
be of as little avail in judging melody, as the organ of tune 
in judging abstract ideas. Each faculty, then, which pro- 



71 

cures knowledge, has not only its perception, its memory, 
and its imagination, which are modes of quantity, but its 
judgment, which is a mode of quality. 

This mode of quality assumes different names, according 
to the objects upon which it is exercised. In the common 
concerns of life it is called judgment ; in literature, in the 
fine arts, it is called taste ; but judgment and taste are, in 
fact, one and the same thing, only directed to different ends. 
What, indeed, is taste, but the power of judging a poem, a 
picture, a statue, any production of the fine arts, any beau- 
ty, any deformity of nature ? This mode, called judgment 
when it pronounces on objects whose principal merit is their 
fitness, and taste when it considers their beauty, belongs to 
every intellectual faculty, from that which perceives an in- 
dividual, to that which compares all objects, and inquires 
into first causes. 

To keep this mode of action in its best condition, the 
equilibrium of all the faculties is indispensably necessary. 
The great sources of their derangement are the feelings, 
the propensities, and the sentiments, of Dr. Spurzheim's 
system. Our perceptions may be just, our reflective fac- 
ulties may be sound and powerful, and thus far we may be 
organized for excellent judgment in all its branches. But, 
if our propensities be strong, our decisions will be influenc- 
ed by them, and the most preponderant will give its bias to 
the mind. So is it with the sentiments ; and the best of 
human feelings may err from too much, as from too small, 
a development. To judge well, to have good taste, the 
elements of the mind must all be present, but so balanced 
that not one shall outweigh another, so mixed that not one 
of them prevails, — as the best sauce, says the Cuisinier 
Imperial, is that into which every good ingredient may en- 



72 

ter, but where not one of them can be tasted separately. 
Let a man in whom combativeness is too large, be consult- 
ed on a trifling point of honor, he will counsel arms ; let a 
poet of a similar organization write a tragedy, his verse will 
breathe pugnacity. Let this organ be deficient, both these 
men will be too tame ; and, in either case, better organized 
heads will blame the judgment of the one and the taste of 
the other. If benevolence be too strong, it may produce 
ruin in common life, and mawkishness in literature ; if it 
be too w T eak, it may give too much scope to the evil pro- 
pensities in the one as in the other, and in both cases judg- 
ment and taste may be offended. It is now easy to under- 
stand how the same person may have excellent judgment 
and excellent taste in some points, and in others be totally 
deficient, as he may have local memory defective, and the 
memory of numbers very powerful. 

But we (phrenologists) go still further ; we annihilate 
association also as a primitive faculty, and call it merely the 
influence of the faculties upon each other. Sympathy, too, 
is the simultaneous action of the same one or more organs, 
similarly affected, in different persons. Pleasure, and 
pain, joy and sorrow, result from the gratification or the 
sufferings of any faculty. Passion is the over-excitement 
of a faculty ; and when more than one is aroused, as is usu- 
ally the case, the passion is more complicated. Habit re- 
sults from the frequent exercise of any faculty, and is 
more the effect than the cause of strong mental power. 
Thus, for instance, if a man has not a strong faculty for 
music, he will be little impelled to practise the art, and will 
acquire no habit of execution. Should the natural impulse 
be strong, he will perform music often — music will become 
habitual to him. Then, indeed, the habit will re-act upon 



73 

his natural talent, and make him an expert performer ; but 
it is not the less true that the habit was acquired only 
through the strength of the primitive impulse. Labor as 
you may to give a person, in whom the organs of compari- 
son and causality are weak, a habit of metaphysical induc- 
tion, and you will labor in vain. 

Man acts and thinks by virtue of the primitive faculties 
which Providence has implanted in his nature ; man can 
act but by these ; he can give himself no new power or fac- 
ulty ; within his own limits he is as much confined as the 
crustaceous animal that lives within its shell, only his lim- 
its are larger. Such is the law of creation. But what dis- 
tinguishes him is the number, the extent, the elevation of 
his faculties. Some species of brutes possess one mental 
power, others another, but none are conspicuously endow- 
ed with more than a few of these. In man, not only all 
that are scattered through the races of the earth are united, 
but other and higher faculties, peculiar to himself alone, are 
given him. On these philosophers have proudly bestowed 
the name of reason ; but what is reason in their sense ? 
Can it be anything but the use of those superior, those ex- 
clusive faculties, which God has given as the badge of the 
creature whom he formed in his own likeness? It may, 
indeed, be improved by practice, as may the faculty of 
number, form, or tune ; but the faculties on w T hich it de- 
pends are as much an original gift of Providence as the in^ 
stinct which prompts the puppy-dog to seek its mother's 
teats, or the young kid to avoid the herbs that are poison- 
ous. All reason is cultivated instinct. It was by instinct, 
planted by the hand of God, and tutored by human cul- 
ture, that Newton discovered gravitation and its laws. It 
was by instinct that Bacon thought ; that Addison was wit- 
7 



74 

By the instinct of ideality, Shakspeare ' exhausted 
worlds, and then imagined new;' by marvellousness he 
peopled them with elves, and spirits, and ghosts, and 
witches ; by individuality, he enumerated all that Puck and 
Fairy relate (Midsummer Night's Dream, act h\, scene 1.) ; 
by melody and time, he threw the words which his instinct 
of language furnished, into the most melodious cadences ; 
and the steam-engine, which now towers to the clouds, has 
its origin in instinct. Man is not less a bundle of instincts 
than were the fasces which were carried before the Roman 
Consuls a bundle of twigs. 

These instincts then, (for so do we peremptorily denom- 
inate the innate faculties of man,) are the source of all that 
now exists in human society ; and their primitive force, suc- 
ceeded by education, marks all the differences between hu- 
man beings. The most improved portions of mankind have 
successively been raised from station to station, by the un- 
remitting action of cultivation. But, in every stage and 
condition, it is original force which elevates the individual 
above his age and country. It is this which gives him su- 
periority and power over the minds of men. This is genius ; 
and the greatest that ever lived is he in whom the greatest 
number of intellectual instincts has been the most complete- 
ly developed, and the most duly balanced. 

Such is a summary of the system by which we (phre- 
nologists) pretend to explain all the phenomena of the hu- 
man mind and character, and to overthrow all the meta- 
physical theories yet devised by philosophers. One of 
these neologists has communicated to us some observations 
of his own, which, though not in print, are here imparted 
to the reader. He says, that led by the nature of his stu- 
dies to examine, at various periods, the metaphysical sys- 



75 

terns with which philosophy has swarmed for ages, he 
could not find in them satisfactory explanations of the facts 
which he daily witnessed in real life. For many of the 
faculties which metaphysicians enumerated, he could see 
no foundation ; and others which they did not even men- 
tion, he fully admitted as fundamental. He ransacked first 
one theory, then another, then combined them from the 
time of Thales the Milesian, who taught all Greece to call the 
soul the principle of life, down ' to him that did but yester- 
day suspire;' and all he learned was, that he had learned, 
and could learn, nothing from them, because they knew 
nothing. This person, however, had been long engaged in 
meditating a work upon some points of the human charac- 
ter ; and finding the doctrines of his predecessors so differ- 
ent from what his observations taught him, he remained at 
variance as well with the moderns as with the ancients. 
He had long since attended a course of lectures by Dr. 
Gall ; but some things in the mental philosophy of this 
master were unsatisfactory ; and though he admitted the 
truth of the general doctrine of the relation between brain 
and mind, he abandoned the study. Brought back again 
accidentally to reconsider it in the state to which Dr. 
Spurzheim has advanced it, the first thing he did was to 
examine its metaphysics, and these he found so conformable 
to the ideas which he himself had long held to be the most 
rational, that he gave it his full assent, not upon a com- 
parison between cerebral and mental development, but 
upon its fitness to elucidate the phenomena of human char- 
acter. If, says he, the table of the simple fundamental fac- 
ulties, as given by Dr. Spurzheim, be weighed merely by 
the same metaphysical principles as all preceding systems; 
if all considerations between brain and mind, if craniology, 



76 

be utterly abstracted from it; if it be considered (like the 
systems of Hobbs, Mandeville, Paley, Stewart, Brown, &c. 
&c.) an a priori system, conjectural, hypothetical, imagina- 
tive, it w ill be found to explain a greater number of facts than 
ever have been explained since the days of Anaxagoras, 
the great ancestor of all moral philosophy, down to the 
Edinburgh Reviewer. 

Let an example be given of this : — There is unfortunate- 
ly one which has made much noise in the world, and 
which our adversaries have brought forward to overwhelm 
us, under the many weights of phrenological, moral, and 
religious perverseness. It is that of John Thurtell, execut- 
ed for the murder of Weare. Our doctrine has been 
reproached with finding, in the head of this assassin, a 
large development of benevolence, and thus making him 
out to be a harmless, good-natured person, and not the 
atrocious, cool-blooded murderer who could brood for 
days and nights over iniquity. 

Surely the persons who make such an objection as this 
must have been scared, by their dread of phrenology, out 
of all they ever knew of human nature, if they can- 
not perceive that the same man does at one moment an 
act of kindness, and at another an act of cruelty ; that he is 
at one moment just, at another unjust. What was Augustus, 
persecuting and proscribing, and Augustus emperor ? What 
was Nero a stripling, and Nero when he saw the city bla- 
zing? What is every man whom we have ever known? 
Is there not a true, but common, cant, about the mingled 
nature of the human species, about the good and evil of our 
hearts, which shows the inordinate absurdity of such a re- 
mark, that might dispense us from all further answer? 
(Note 7.) But let us examine facts, and see, not from his 
head, but from his biography, what Thurtell was. 



77 

Thurtell, being applied to in behalf of a friend in dis- 
tress, drew out of his pocket his last remaining half-sove- 
reign, and said, 'Give him the half of this: but no — he 
wants it more than I do : he is sick ; give it him all.' 
He once innocently caused a quarrel between two friends, 
and shed tears of tenderness over their reconciliation. His 
kindness to Hunt excited as much gratitude as Hunt was 
capable of feeling. His affection toward all his family was 
extreme, and his attachment to his friends inviolable. His 
general character, when lieutenant on board the Adamant 
in the Leith roads, was that of a dashing, thoughtless, 
good-hearted officer. Yet, from his early youth, he was 
irascible, and what was called a murderous shot ; a very 
dare-devil, a kind of prize-fighter, a notorious liar, a dupe 
of all his gambling associates ; and he became a predeter- 
mined, cold-blooded murderer. These are facts ; and let 
us now put different systems to the test, by attempting to 
explain them. Unity of mind, its indivisibility into various 
faculties, feelings, and propensities, can do it nearly as 
well as the indivisibility of the solar ray can explain the 
prismatic spectrum and the rainbow. This system then 
needs not much examination, and recourse must be had to 
some which admit a plurality of faculties. But which of 
these must be preferred? One that is hypothetical, or one 
that is founded on fact ? All are subject to the same ob- 
jection, of admitting contradictory sentiments in man; and 
if phrenology falls by this objection, all the rest must fall; 
and so indeed must facts. Whatever system does not ad- 
mit a sentiment, or a combination of sentiments, to account 
for Thurtell's irascibility, his benevolence, his pugnacity, 
his attachment, his lying, his firmness, his tenderness, his 
cruelty, is defective. Let those who have leisure examine 
7* 



78 

whether phrenology does not effect this more completely 
than all others put together, and better than any that 
could be fabricated by their means. In truthj no metaphy- 
sics but those of phrenology could account for the apparent 
contradictions in that man's mind ; none which reject, as 
fundamental principles of human nature, benevolence, 
combativeness, attachment, destructiveness, secretiveness, 
firmness, can explain the facts of his life and character. 
If his charitable, generous acts be not totally denied, how 
would unity of mind reconcile them with the murder he 
committed ? But our (phrenologists) doctrine says, he 
had large benevolence, and this was sometimes very 
active ; he had large combativeness, large destructiveness, 
and when circumstances roused these into action, they 
were the more imperious, because they were aided by a 
strong development of all the inferior propensities, while 
the superior faculties were too weakly developed to coun- 
teract or counsel them. The cerebral organization of 
Thurtell, compared with his life, testifies as strongly in 
favor of phrenology as facts can do ; and if the world had 
been told by any other tongue but that of our science, that 
he, or any other murderer, had often done kind actions, 
the thing would have appeared quite simple, quite in con- 
formity with daily observations. But the subterfuges 
which men take to evade conviction, when they are resolv- 
ed that they will not be convinced, are wonderful. 

One often hears of contradictions in character ; and, 
often too it is said, that those contradictions are only ap- 
parent, because we have not the key of the character in 
which they seem to be. Now, the general key, which 
effaces all contradictions from every moral manifestation, 
is phrenology. Actions, as opposite as cruelty and benev- 



79 

olence, appear to us (phrenologists) as natural, as easily- 
accounted for, as that a man should one day calculate by 
means of his organ of number, and the next day paint by 
means of his organ of color. 

Although, tried by this test, the metaphysics of phre- 
nology pretend to greater validity than all other systems, 
yet it is not thus that we — its votaries — maintain it, but 
by the relation of cerebral development to mental mani- 
festations. It is upon facts confirming this relation that we 
proceed, and the number which we have collected exceeds 
all belief. The collection of Dr. Gall, that of Dr. Spurz- 
heim, of Mr. Deville, whose zeal and activity in promoting 
the practical part of the science cannot be sufficiently com- 
mended ; those of the Phrenological Societies of London, 
Edinburgh, and many other places, contain many thou- 
sands of facts which are incontrovertible. It is not in the 
power of any phrenologist to enregister all living exam- 
ples, but we build our pretensions upon every age of the 
world, and call not only moderns, but ancients to our aid. 
As this is one of the most curious parts of our pretensions, 
it must be briefly noticed. 

Every head which has been handed down to us from 
antiquity is in as exact conformity with our doctrine, as if 
we ourselves had moulded it for our own purposes. The 
bad Roman emperors, Caligula, Nero, Caracalla, have the 
regions where the inferior faculties reside very much de- 
veloped ; while the antagonist faculties are small. The 
Antonines have heads that would do honor to any man. 
Viiellius is a mass of sensuality, deprived of all elevation. 
The Roman gladiator most powerful in the basilary 
region, has a narrow and contracted forehead, where little 
rea on could reside. In Homer, the development of 



80 

ideality is immense, and still greater perhaps in the raptur- 
ous Pindar. In Demosthenes there is a fine show of the 
superior faculties, but the organ of language is not the 
most prominent, neither were the natural command and 
flow of words the characteristics of his eloquence. His 
desire of gain, too, is largely developed. The head of 
Socrates is such as Drs. Gall and Spurzheim w 7 ould model 
to demonstrate the organ of marvellousness, and a mind of 
visions; and so is a head, more modern, that of Torquato 
Tasso. The head of Zeno is that of a profound and 
moral thinker, as he was. That of Seneca has much bad, 
but more good ; so balanced that a struggle between them 
will be necessary, but the latter will generally prevail. 
The head of Cicero, larger on one side than on the other, 
has more language than Demosthenes, with large reflecting 
faculties — vanity, the desire of gain and of fame, and 
cautiousness great, with little hope and little courage. In 
short, the examples of antique statues in our favor are 
innumerable. Now, either these heads are genuine casts, 
or they are not. If casts, their perfect coincidence with 
respective characters most phrenologically proclaims, what 
all men indeed have long since known, that nature has 
acted in all ages by immutable laws. If they are not casts, 
but ideal heads, then the ancients had observed the fact, 
that a certain form of head regularly accompanied such a 
power of mind ; and their sculptors, without accounting 
for it, registered it in their works. 

But the heads of Venus and Jupiter necessarily are 
ideal. Now, the head of the Venus de Medici — suppos- 
ed, indeed, to be a modern addition to the original mutila- 
ted statue — is, like that of many a belle, too small to con- 
tain much mind, but sufficient, perhaps, for the goddess of 



81 

beauty. The front of Jove is exactly what we would give 
to the creator of the world — locality, space, immense ; 
form, size, weight, color, order, number, phenomena, very 
large; with prodigious reflecting faculties. One single 
faculty, indeed, is small, and that was the least necessary 
of all to the maker of the world — wit. The occupation 
of shaking the earth, the sun, moon, and stars out of chaos, 
certainly was not one which could excite the creator to 
crack jokes ; yet it seems he could rally his consort — 
whom, by-the-by, her ox-eyes must have made insuffera- 
bly verbose — when she read him one of her long curtain- 
lectures. The ancients were at least as good seers, as 
good observers, as the moderns, though they but ill ac- 
counted for the phenomena which they perceived. 

It is with hosts of alleged facts that we (phrenologists) 
have taken the field ; and the way to beat us out of it is 
evident : it is to bring a very small number of counter-facts 
to overthrow our fabric. A very small number indeed 
would be sufficient ; for the arch which is built of many 
stones falls when but two or three are removed. This is 
the method which anti-phrenologists should long since have 
tried, instead of abuse, — of allowing themselves to be- 
come irritated, or endeavoring to out-face us by ridicule or 
anathema. Not scorn nor irony, not force or tyranny, can 
smother truth in the nineteenth century; for even in the 
seventeenth, the prisons of the Inquisition, though they 
could silence Galileo, could not restore to the sun the sup- 
posed motion which this philosopher had destroyed. But 
we are men of good composition ; and since so many per- 
sons are desirous of becoming our exterminators, and of 
sharing in the glory of expelling error, we will put into their 
hands the only weapons by which they can hope to sue- 



82 

ceed ; and instruct them in the marches and the counter- 
marches by which they may the most vigorously assail us. 
To this end we must begin by telling them that smiles, 
sneers, contempt, fall from us like drops of pelting rain 
from an armor of oiled silk, and the shafts of authority 
would lose their points upon our hardened corslets. We 
must be out-facted ; — such a number of well-ascertained 
truths must be brought against us as, in all fair proportion 
to human certainty, may overbalance our observations ; and 
these truths must rest upon such evidence as a jury of un- 
biassed experts would allow to be fair and admissible. 

It is not every person who has studied, or who has lei- 
sure and disposition to study, the forms of heads and their 
coincidence with mind ; and we do not think it presumptu- 
ous to request all such to hold their tongues. But let any 
man or woman of liberal education, endowed with average 
mental powers, purchase (for about five shillings) one of the 
casts on which the organs are marked, and let him thereon 
assiduously study the topography of the head, until he can 
lay his finger on the place of each organ, as surely as upon 
the islands of Sumatra or Borneo on the terrestrial sphere. 
Let him then divide the head by imaginary lines, as Dr. 
Spurzheim has done in his c Phrenology in connexion with 
the study of Physiognomy,' into four regions ; first, by a 
line drawn from the ear (the meatus auditorius externus) to 
the point where the frontal and the sagittal sutures unite, — 
into an anterior, the frontal, and a posterior, the occipital 
region ; secondly, by another line crossing this, and drawn 
from the middle of the forehead to the point where the 
parietal and the occipital bones unite into an inferior or 
basilary, and a superior or sincipital region. Let him 
study the organs, and their import, which are situated in 



83 

each of these districts, and know in which of them the 
inferior propensities, the higher sentiments, the percep- 
tive, the reflective faculties reside.* Let him, thus ac- 
coutred, sally forth to observation, and slily cast his eyes 
on all the heads he meets ; not yet to examine their 
organs and faculties, but to reconnoitre the general shapes 
of heads, to ascertain whether there really is so much dif- 
ference as we assert, and to obtain terms of comparison 
with regard to the development of the various regions. 
When his tact has been exercised upon these general 
points, he may give a glance at the particular organs; but 
let him not be in a hurry to verify their relation to the 
character of the individual. He must begin with the 
larger organs, — with those which occupy the most room 
on the head, and consequently modify its shape the 
most — as cautiousness, for instance; and when he has 
fully learned to appreciate the size of these, he may pro- 
ceed to the smaller organs, ending with those of which no 



* The following is an improved method of studying the cerebral or- 
ganization in general. Let those portions of the animal feelings ; — 
of the moral and religious sentiments; — and of the intellectual facul- 
ties, be compared with each other in the same person. To that effect, 
let a line be drawn from the anterior edge of constructiveness at the 
temples upwards to the temporal ridge, and continued along this ridge 
to the middle of the upper border of cautiousness, and then toward the* 
mesial line of the head, between the organs of conscientiousness and 
love of approbation, and terminate between self-esteem and firmness. 
The portion of brain below and behind this line contains the organs of 
the animal feelings. If another line be drawn from the anterior edge 
of constructiveness in the direction of the upper borders of tune, caus- 
ality and comparison, the cerebral portion between the two lines is the 
seat of the human sentiments, and the portion before the second line 
is the forehead, strictly speaking, and the residence of the intellectual 
faculties. Dr. Spurzheim. 



84 

less than five are situated in the ciliary ridge. When bis 
eye is well exercised and his tact thoroughly formed, he 
may begin to apply his knowledge. He must lay his 
friends and intimates — the persons with whose characters 
and talents he is the best acquainted — under contribution, 
and scan their foreheads with his eye, or, better still, lay 
his hand, widely extended, on their sinciput, embracing all 
the organs of that region in one grasp, and afterwards pass 
it down upon the occiput and the basilary region. His 
friends, indeed, may not be very sincere upon all points of 
their characters, and many inaccuracies in the current 
ideas and current language of society will be embarrassing, 
but the observer must supply the deficiency ; and, in the 
circle of his acquaintance, he will find many whose tal- 
ents — as music, drawing, calculation, manual dexterity, 
&c. — or whose avarice, benevolence, cruelty, timidity, or 
courage, are too well defined to admit of denial. The 
examination of the heads of children, too, will do much to 
confirm or refute our doctrine ; for parents avow many 
things of them which they would not say of themselves ; 
and boys and girls tell tales of each other, which are often 
just keys to character. Visiting schools, then, if our an- 
tagonists have it in their power, and prisons, if that be not 
repugnant, will give them boundless means to refute us; 
and they will be much assisted by having access to the 
collections of phrenological societies now largely diffused 
over the kingdom — those of Dr. Spurzheim, and of Mr. 
Deville, in London, and to Mr. O'NeiPs, in Edinburgh,* 



* It is much to be desired that the persons who possess collections 
would add to them the heads of animals. Comparative phrenology ig. 
one of the most interesting and amusing branches of the science. 



85 

he. As they advance in knowledge,. and become expe- 
rienced, opportunities will multiply around them. Public 
meetings will rejoice them ; private assemblies will glad- 
den their hearts : in ball-rooms they will look for brains — 
in churches for devotion ; in Westminster-hall for justice ; 
in the navy and the army for courage ; and if they find them 
not, we avow ourselves defeated. And if w ? e are defeated, 
may our enemies, w T hen they stand exulting over our 
crushed and prostrate organs, inherit from us the only 
boon we have to bequeath to them — a delight unknown to 
all but phrenologists — the raptures which a bald head — 
once the field of our glories, now of theirs — inspires! 
and curse the pernicious age of the Grand Monarch who 
buried craniology in periwigs ! 

It is fair, however, to tell our adversaries, that this pre- 
cious knowledge is not to be acquired in a day ; neither 
do we know of any science that can. To estimate the 
mere size of an organ of a head, may not be very difficult, 
though even that requires some practice ; but to appreci- 
ate the entire development of the brain, in all its parts, — 
their proportions, their relation t:> each other, their combi- 
nations, requires time and exercise. The tact must be 
formed, and a minute knowledge of the shapes, general 
and particular, which compose such and such a character, 
and give this or that talent, must be acquired. They 
among us who have had the good fortune to see Dr. 
Spurzheim exercise his art in a numerous assembly of 
subjects, to witness the promptness as well as the certainty 
of his judgments, would be inclined to attribute it to super- 
natural agency. The writer of this article lately saw him 
in a school of fifty-eight boys, not one of whom he had 
ever beheld till that moment, run his eye rapidly over 
8 



86 

every head, touch some which appeared to possess emi- 
nently any defect or quality, and, in less than an hour, 
deliver his opinion upon the most remarkable subjects — 
for good or for bad, without committing a single mistake ; 
for all his opinions coincided most accurately with the tes- 
timony of the masters, to whom the scholars were well 
known. The same trial was made, the same day, and 
with the same success, in a school of thirty-four girls, 
and gave miraculous evidence of the truth of our doctrine. 
A course of practical — if we may so call them of clinical 
lectures, as a compliment to phrenological study, has long 
been desired, to form practical students : and Dr. Spurz- 
heim now delivers such courses in London, for the further 
instruction of those who already possess the rudiments of 
the science. In this he analyzes known heads ; compares 
their cerebral development with their mental manifesta- 
tions ; discusses the reasons why, according to their or- 
ganizations, they evinced such a talent, such a tendency y 
and explains the combinations — for in them reside the 
pith and marrow of the science — the final consequence 
of which is the general assemblage of qualities called char- 
acter. Such a course as this he never thought of in 
France, for the attempt would have been vain. 

By all these helps, it is to be hoped that observations 
will be multiplied, that the science will be diffused, and its 
truth ascertained ; and the public opinion of England is of 
much more value than the decision of learned bodies in 
any other country. Some say that phrenology should be 
handed over to one class of men, some to another; and 
physicians have been named as the most fit persons to de- 
termine the question. But we cannot see what requisites 
they possess more than other men, unless they are at the 



87 

same time, what does not necessarily follow, good moral 
observers. The requisites for a practical phrenologist are, 
the power of appreciating size and form, accompanied by a 
talent for estimating moral phenomena. Now these medi- 
cine does not bestow ; neither does the study of theology, 
of the hgum legumque, or the study of anything but of 
themselves, bestow them ; and all we request is, that phre- 
nology may not be sentenced to annihilation by those who 
know nothing of the subject. This prayer, we trust, is 
not more extraordinary than those which mathematicians, 
astronomers, chemists, nay, which shoemakers, would 
proffer. (Note 8.) 

We (phrenologists) are fully aware of the many motives 
which militate against us, and the adoption of our doctrines. 
Everything new is, and ought to be, received with caution ; 
but how much more caution than usual must be used be- 
fore men who have long been in the habit of supposing the 
brain to be useless can admit that a spherical excrescence 
like the head is that which makes them think and feel. 
And all this, too, comes from a German ; a man, who was 
obliged to learn English, presumes to teach Englishmen 
why and how they are the greatest nation on the globe. 
This is too much ; and we are too wise, say some, to be- 
lieve the Doctor. We have an un-take-in-able sagacity 
which will not be his dupe : we are too much upon our 
guard even to listen to him. Others, again, are ashamed 
to own their conviction ; and very sensible men are known 
to be phrenologists, yet who are afraid to declare them- 
selves openly, as long as ridicule dares point his waggish 
finger at their approbativeness. One word to quiet the 
self-love of those who fear to commit their sagacity in this 
trial Sagacity does not consist either in doubting or in 



88 

believing : as much, or as little of it may be shown in the 
one as in the other. Sagacity is proved by distinguishing 
truth from falsehood. Now, the first step to this is in- 
quiry ; and this step, unlike that which St. Denis made 
with his head in his hand — c'est le premier pas qui 
coute — is the easiest of all. This is the step which we 
(phrenologists) invite our foes to make, giving them up 
entirely to their own wisdom to make the last, assuring 
them that the true test of sagacity is truth. 

Another calamity is, that phrenology has not been pro- 
tected by the fashionables in science ; and that its chief 
supporters have been among the lower ranks of the learn- 
ed. We really do not understand what fashion is in 
science ; neither do we conceive how truth is to be chosen 
as a petite maitresse chooses her gown, or a dandy his 
mustachoes. If persons of fashion will not believe in phre- 
nology, so much the worse for them ; phrenology can do 
without them. If fashion and respectability be the same 
thing, however, the University of Cambridge may count for 
something, and save the blushes of many who now fear to 
be called quizzes by avowing their conviction. (Note 9.) 

The transition from the old to the new mental doctrines 
certainly requires some force of mind ; and the change is 
great from one metaphysical catalogue to the other. It re- 
minds us of a revolution which, in the memory of many 
living, took place in the chemical sciences, when the 
pneumatic doctrines were first published. The Aristote- 
lians, the Cartesians, the Stahlians of ancient days, were 
the many-colored metaphysicians of former schools ; fire, 
air, earth, water, were perception, memory, judgment, im- 
agination ; and phlogiston was the soul. Long had these 
elements continued to furnish out the material world, when 



89 

a simple appeal to weight and measure put them all to 
flight. Long had hypothetic principles explained every 
phenomenon of mind, when experiment and observation 
proved their non-existence. The Stahlians, who long had 
reigned unmolested, shuddered when they heard of oxygen; 
and would rather that the ocean had swallowed them up, 
than have seen one drop of water decomposed. Athanors 
waxed dim, caput-mortuums looked aghast, as phlogiston 
took its nether flight, and hydrogen lorded it over metallic 
resurrections. Even so do Lockeites and Reidites now 
grow pale, when any one of the thirty-five innate faculties 
is named, and when the element of general memory bows 
before the powers which have rent its empire into four- 
teen sad dependencies. It is not that the names of Stahl 
and Locke are not venerable in silence, but, fact versus 
man, man must be nonsuited. 

The reasons, too, why error so long prevailed in both 
these sciences, are not without analogy to each other ; and 
they who have examined both sides of both questions, and 
have finally been guided by experiment, find in them 
much subject of reflection upon the general march of the 
human mind. In the Stahlian doctrine, the increase of 
weight in metallic oxides was entirely overlooked, as was 
their loss of weight upon revivification ; and philogiston was 
a body endowed with positive levity, one which took away 
from the absolute weight of the substance with which it was 
combined, yet augmented its specific gravity. No ac- 
count either was taken of the volatile products of an opera- 
tion of those which, when not allowed to escape, burst eve- 
ry vessel which would confine them. Not much more than 
half a century ago, the art of perforating air-tight bolt heads 
8* 



90 

was taught in chemical lectures ; that is to say, the means 
of perpetuating ignorance ; but the art of making imperme- 
able lutes succeeded to it. All that was necessary to de- 
monstrate the errors of Stahlism was, to weigh a metal and 
its oxide ; to collect the aeriform products, and to examine 
them ; to see that combustion could not take place without 
oxygen. These observations were made at length, and the 
science changed its whole hypothesis. All that was want- 
ing to create phrenology, was, to know that all in metaphy- 
sics, was conjecture ; that not a single fact existed to prove 
that perception, memory, imagination, were simple funda- 
mental faculties, but many to prove that they were not; 
that the various systems which had succeeded each other 
explained nothing ; and that all we knew about the brain 
was, how to slice it. What future progress and vicissitudes 
remain to each of these sciences we shall not determine, 
for they are beyond our speculations. Chemistry embraces 
the most subtle properties of nature ; but is not the mind 
of man a universe, and are not its relations infinite ? Far 
greater, in our opinions, are the dependencies of human 
feeling and reason, of passion and intellect, than those which 
elaborate matter, or guide the world through space. 

The facts adduced in favor of our science rest principal- 
ly on the authorities of its great founders, and it is but fair 
that the objections should be brought forward by men whose 
endowments bear some proportion to theirs ; or else that 
they be supported by an adequate number of competent 
witnesses. Although the Edinburgh Reviewer could col- 
lect no information from the volumes of Dr. Gall, yet we 
(phrenologists) look upon them to be as extraordinary, in 
point of erudition, new facts, and new observations, as any 
that have honored the present age ; and Dr. Spurzheim 



91 

has shown, in all his writings, a mind far above the com- 
mon level of observing moralists and philosophers. These 
two men have devoted their lives to the study, and it would 
be unjust to overturn their doctrines by the hasty conclu- 
sions of a tyro. We do not, indeed, require so long and 
severe an apprenticeship in our opponents, as the masters 
of the science have undergone ; but we exact a fair and 
honest competition. (Note 10.) 

One claim we must make in favor of our science, and this 
distinguishes it from all the branches of physiology which 
have been cultivated to this day, — it has cost no blood : 
not a single act of cruelty has dishonored it ; while Messrs. 
Majendie, Flourensand others, have been torturing animals 
to teach their pupils but little, and repeating their tortures, 
to learn that little over and over again, our masters have 
not mutilated a single insect while alive, or shortened the 
existence of a single being, to have its brain a few days 
sooner under their scalpel. Yet phrenologists might feel 
as much interest in scraping away a piece of cautiousness, 
and then observing how dauntless the animal would be- 
come ; or of excavating an organ of locality, to make him 
lose his way, as any physiological butcher could do : or 
they might be as curious as Vesalius was to take a peep 
into the living organs of some human subject. But they 
have abstained from every act of cruelty, and shown that 
anatomy and physiology may receive some of its best ad- 
ditions without becoming inhuman. 

1 The bantling which but a few years since we ushered 
into the w 7 orld,' say the phrenologists, 'is now become a 
giant ; and as well might you attempt to smother him as to 
entangle a lion in the gossamer, or drown hiin in the morn- 



92 

ing dew.' ■ Your giant,' say the anti-phrenologists, ' is a 
butterfly : to-day he roams on gilded wing, to-morrow he 
will show his hideousness and be forgotten.' 

Dixit the phrenologist. Dixit the anti-phrenologist. And 
now the Foreign Quarterly resumes its wonted we, to re- 
peat our assurances to our readers, that not one word of 
what precedes has been said by us, but by the advocates of 
the contending parties. Fiat justitia. 



MOTES 



Note 1, page 1& 

The phrenological faculties of Dr. Gall's infantile genius were, 
Individuality, Eventuality, and Causality, in an eminent degree. 

It has been remarked, as singular, that Dr. Gall should have 
been the first founder of this new science, whilst he could not 
recollect persons after dinner, though they had been near him at 
table, and since he could not find his way again to places where 
he had been before, or, in phrenological terms: since he had form 
and locality very small. Those who make that remark, can nei- 
ther know the proceeding of Dr. Gall, nor understand the true 
meaning of the two phrenological denominations. Dr. Gall com- 
pared the size of individual cerebral portions with certain talents, 
or characters, eminent in any way ; and he was not deficient in 
the power of perceiving size and its differences- The want of 
locality did not prevent him from making discoveries, any more 
than the want of seeing certain colors hinders any one to cultivate 
geometry or mathematics in general. Dr. Gall's deficiency in form 
explains why he constantly attached himself to isolated elevations 
and depressions on the surface of the heads, rather than to their 
general configuration, and left this rectification of phrenology to 
my exertions : he nevertheless, has the great merit of having dis- 
covered first, certain relations between cerebral development, and 
mental manifestations. 

The few historical statements of phrenology made in this article, 
the nomenclature introduced by Dr. Gall, and our works, suffi- 
ciently prove that Dr. Gall and myself cannot be meant, when it is 
asserted that the phrenologists first [ founded a theory, and then 
looked out for facts to support it. I am sorry to see that friends 
and foes, the former by unskilful management, and the latter by 
unfair statements, have retarded the progress of phrenology. In 
any accredited science, those who teach it are taxed for their mis- 
conception or mismanagement, whilst the reality and merit of any 
new science, of phrenology for instance, are judged of, even by 
the ignorance or unskilfulness of its disciples. Phrenology has 
its foundation in experience, whatever the opinions of its friends 
or foes may be. Whatever is maintained in opposition to nature 
must be rejected, and every one of its teachers, master or disciple, 
is, and can be, only answerable for his opinions. 



94 



Note 2, p. 17. 

Some opponents of phrenology among the medical profession 
have a strong tendency to ascribe to others the merit of our ana- 
tomical discoveries. Dr. Gordon, in his examination of our claims 
as anatomists, in 1816, said (p. 99), thaf Reil is the original discov- 
erer of our ideas ; that we have borrowed them from his writings ; 
and (p. 182), that Reil has been defrauded. Dr. Gordon thought 
it sufficient to make such statements, and to refer to Reil's archives 
of physiology for the years 1809 and 1812. — A professor of anat- 
omy and physiology in his lectures before the College of Surgeons 
in London in the spring of 1829, thought it right to renew Dr. 
Gordon's opinion, and to give his assent to it. I must, therefore, 
repeat to the public the same answer which I gave to Dr. Gordon 
in 1817, in my Examination of the Objections made in Great 
Britain against the doctrines of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim. 

'Why have we not acknowledged that we ow our anatomical 
information of the brain, to the writings of Reil? The reason is, 
simply, because it is not the case. 5 (I may add : it could not be, 
for his writings did not exist.) ' The proof of this assertion is equal- 
ly simple, I have only to state the history of our investigation.' 

' While at Vienna, we spoke of the great leading points of our 
anatomical demonstrations, viz. of the aggregation of various cere- 
bral pares, and their connexion with the medulla oblongata; of the 
proportion of the grey and white substance ; of the diverging fibres; 
and of unfolding the brain. 

' In the year 1805, the 6th of March, we left Vienna for Berlin, 
where we repeated our anatomical demonstrations, in the presence 
of the medical professors and numerous auditors. Outlines of our 
anatomical and physiological propositions were published during 
that spring, by Professor BischofF. From Berliu we went to Pots- 
dam, then to Leipsig, where Dr. Knoblanch published an account 
of our doctrines of the brain. Then the usual demonstrations and 
lectures were delivered in Dresden, where Mr. Bloede published 
outlines of our anatomical and physiological views. From Dresden, 
we went to Halle, where Professors Reil and Loder, and numer- 
ous gentlemen of the profession, honored us with their presence at 
the public lectures and demonstrations. With Loder we repeated 
several times the anatomical demonstrations ; and once we dissect- 
ed with Reil, a brain, quietly in his own room. He was so much 
pleased with our demonstrations, that he gave to Dr. Gall some 
drawings with which he was formerly occupied de structure ner- 
vorum tt cerebelli. Thus I beg to observe, that in the summer of 
1805, we demonstrated to Reil the same leading points in the anat- 
omy of the brain which we still maintain. We then continued to 
lecture and to demonstrate the brain, that very same year, in Wei- 
mar, Jena, Goettingen, Brownschweig, Hamburgh, Kiel, and Co- 
penhagen. In the year 1806, anatomical demonstrations were made 
in Bremen, Munster in Westphalia, Amsterdam, Leyden, Frank- 
fort upon the Main, Heidelberg, Manheim, Stuttgard, and Fribourgh 



95 

in Brisgaw. In the year 1807 we went to M arbourgh, Wiirtzbourgh, 
Munie, Augsbourgh, Ulm, Zurich, Bern, Bale, and in the autumn 
of the same year, to Paris, where we dissected the brain, first in the 
presence of Cuvier, Fourcroy, GeofFroi de St. Hilaire, Dumeril, Dr. 
Demangeon and others, and successively before many learned so- 
cieties. Meanwhile, numerous publications had appeared iu Ger- 
many. Dr. Demangeon who had attended the lectures in Ham- 
borough, published in Paris, 1806, his Physiologie Intellectuelle, and 
mentioned our anatomical views. 

1 In March, 1808, we delivered our memoir to the French In- 
stitute. The Commissioners declare at the beginning of their Re- 
port, that the) have hesitated a moment whether they should ex- 
amine our pap r. there is a rule ' de ne point emettre avis 
sur les ouvrages deja sounds au grand tribunal du public par la 
voie de I'impi * Ton pourait croire que la doctrine anatomi- 
que de M. Gall a recti, par I'enseigneme&t oral que le professeur en 
a fait dans les principalis villus de PEurope, et par les nombreux 
ex traits q n out repandus, une publicite a pen pres 
equivalents a cells dune impression authentique.' They howev- 
er, add, that Gall had not given his sanction to any one of the pub- 
lications, and that this circumstance was one of the motives which 
induced them to examine our memoir. 

'The report is printed, even translated, and inserted in the Edin- 
burgh Medical and Surgical Journal, for January 1809. We pub- 
lished our .Memoir with observations on the report in 1809. After 
thi>, Rail published in his Archives, views essentially the same as 
ours, of the a 'cerebral parts, of diverging and converg- 

ing fibres, and ot' t lie possibility of separating the convolutions in 
the middle line. He does not state that he was the first who has 
conceived such general ideas, nor does he mention us as the invent- 
ors. He does not, and could not say that we have learnt from j 
him : he merely d and jepresents them in engravings. As [ 

we had been in almost every town, and at all universities in Ger- 
many, our countrymen knew how to estimate the proceedings of 
Red, and it is only the great publicity of our demonstrations that 
jl for not mentioning them. 

4 It is true Reil has chosen other names; he calls our apparatus 
of formation, Hirnshenkel system, and our apparatus of union, 
Balken system, our diverging bundles are his Stabkrans. We 
speak dimply of fibres, he of various convexities, obtuse and acute 
angles of the fibres, of lamina 3 , fossae, and radii of the white sub- 
stance ; of wings, mountains, lobules, teeth ; of a comb, and of sim- 
ilar mechanical denominations, which may appear interesting to a 
mechanical disseeter who is attentive to every little cul-de-sac, and 
declares the anatomy of the brain unnecessary to physiological and 
pathological views. (Dr. Gordon had said so.) We think that 
there would be no end of such mechanical details in comparative 
anatomy, if, for instance, in the gradation of animals every new ad- 
ditional part in the cerebellum is to be named, who will learn all 
the names ? and of what use will such a study be ? We therefore 



96 

point out the structure of each part, well aware, however, that eacFi 
part is modified in the individuals of different species, nay in the 
different individuals of the same species.' 

Professor Bischoff, in the preface of his Exposition of Dr. Gall's 
doctrine, reports Reil's own words, after we had dissected the brain 
to him in 1805. ' I have seen in the anatomical demonstrations of 
the brain, made by Gall, more than I thought man could discover 
in his whole life.' This short account is sufficient to prove, that 
there is no occasion whatever for us to apologize with respect to 
the publications of Reil. On the contrary, might we not rather com- 
plain of several recent authors who, in their publicaiions, speak of 
our views without any mention of the source whence they were 
derived, or of the individuals who first struck them out, or reduced 
them to certainty by direct proofs. The influence our labors have 
had on the study of the nervous system, is incontestible. To be 
convinced of this, it is enough to examine the state of knowledge 
in regard to the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the brain 
and spinal nerves, when we began to develope our ideas on these 
matters, whether it was by teaching orally, by dissecting public- 
ly, or by means of our writings. M. de Blainville is one of the few, 
who, placing truth above selfishness, and looking for mere person- 
al merit, declared, (in his report on Dr. Foville's researches on the 
anatomy of the biain, read to the Academy of Natural Sciences, 
the 23d of June, 1828,) that Gall and myself have given to the re- 
searches of the nervous system and brain, an impulse and direction 
altogether new; — that this new direction has diverted anatomists 
from the beaten track to which they had attached themselves be- 
fore our labors ; and that if we had done nothing but this, and were 
all the points of our anatomy to be successfully contested and com- 
pletely refuted, there would still remain to us, the honor of having 
discovered a new impulse, and consequently to us must be referred 
as to its source, all that may be valuable in future labors on that 
subject. 

As, however, our anatomical discoveries are often quoted under 
the name Gall alone, it becomes necessary to allot to each of us the 
portion he deserves. It is universally known, that Dr. Gall has the 
great merit of having first begun our phrenological inquiries. The 
medal published in Paris after his death, and dedicated, au createur 
dela physiologie du cerveau indicates, the merit due to him alone. 
He had pointed out many relations which exist between various 
talents and characters of man, and instinct of animals, and certain 
cerebral parts, before I was so happy as to become acquainted with 
him. But though he is the first founder of the physiological basis 
of phrenology, no one can deprive me of that honor and merit 
which 1 deserve in our common labors and in the progress of 
phrenology. (I settled my anatomical account with Dr. Gall, in an 
appendix to my French Essay philosophique, Paris, 1820, and in 
the preface of my English work on the anatomy of the brain, Lon- 
don, 1826. Dr. Gall has never contradicted my statements ; and in 



97 

the last volume of his work, Sur les Fonctions du Cerveau, p. 490, 
he said, l Qu'il me soil permis de relever, une tendance singuliere 
que nianifestent beaucoup de personnes d'attribuerNos decouvertes 
k d'autres par example a Reil ; et M. Spurzheim a deja dams plus- 
ieurs endroits, revendique notre propriete.' The following is a 
summary of my relation with Gall. In the year 1800, I first at- 
tended a private course of lectures, which he had repeated from 
time to time, during four preceding years. He then spoke of the 
brain as the organ of the mind ; — of the necessity of considering the 
brain as divided into different organs ; — of the possibility of deter- 
mining the special organs, by the development of individual parts 
of the brain, exhibited in the external configuration of the head. 
He admitted organs of particular memories, and cf several feelings, 
but he had not yet commenced any anatomical investigation of the 
brain. Hitherto he had recourse to physiognomical means alone, 
to discover the physiology of the brain. But physiology without 
anatomy is imperfect: Dr. Gall felt this, particularly in observing a 
poor woman with hydrocephalus, who was weakly, but as active 
and intelligent as other women of her class. He concluded, as 
Tulpius had done long before, from a similar case, that the struc- 
ture of the brain must be different from what it is commonly be- 
lieved to be. The woman died at the age of fifty-four years. Four 
pounds of water were found in her head, but the brain was not 
destroyed nor dissolved. 

As Dr. Gall's time was greatly occupied by his medical duties, 
he employed a medical student, Mr. Niclas. to dissect for him. The 
investigations, however, were conducted from works published on 
the brain, and with mere mechanical views, as mentioned in the 
preface, p. xvi. of our large work on the anatomie et physiologie 
du systeme nerveaux en general et du cerveau en particulier. 

From the moment in which I got acquainted with Dv. Gall's 
physiological doctrine of the brain 1 have never lost sight of it. My 
medical school studies being at an end, in 1804 I joined Dr. Gall, 
and undertook the prosecution of the anatomical department, 
especially. Dr. Gall then knew the ecussatiou of the pyramids ; 
he also spoke of their passage through the pons varoli, and eleven 
layers of logitudinal and transverse fibres in the pons, of the con- 
tinuation of the optic nerves to the anterior pair of the corpula 
quadrigemina, of the diverging bundles at the outside of the erura 
cerebri in the dissection, in which Vieussens, Monro, Vicq d'Azyr, 
and Reil (Gren's Journal, 1795, 1.) had followed them, the first in 
Scraping, the others in slicing the brain. He also showed, like 
Vicq d'Azyr, the continuation of the anterior commissure through 
the corpora striata, and mentioned the unfolding of the brain in 
hydrocephalus. The idea, however, which he had conceived of 
the brain in that state, was incorrect, inasmuch as he considered 
the hemispheres as resulting from a membrane folded together, 
and fancied that the crura cerebri expanded there, and were then 
folded by juxtaposition of the convolutions. This erroneous idea 
9 



98 

may be found recorded in all expositions which various individu- 
als have published of Dr. Gall's lectures, and was not corrected 
previously to the presentation of our Memoir to the French Insti- 
tute, in the year 1808. Till then the true structure of the convo- 
lutions and their connexion with the rest of the cerebral mass had 
never been described. 

When I began to dissect the brain, I found the spirit in which 
the structure of this organ had been examined, too mechanical, and 
endeavored to discover a structure of the brain in harmony with 
its functions. I succeeded in observing the law of the continual 
and successive additions of the cerebral fibres; — their division into 
two principal portions which are in communication with the rest 
of the nervous system ;— their divergent directions towards the 
convolutions; — the difference of the diverging and converging or 
uniting fibres ; — the true connexion of the convolutions with the 
rest of the cerebral mass, and their structure, which permits every 
convolution to be unfolded, as happens in hydrocephalus internus, 
whilst the cerebral substance at the bottom of the convolutions, 
viz. the mass where the diverging and converging fibres cross 
each other, is pushed by the water, between the two layers of 
which every convolution is composed. In our public as well as 
private demonstrations of the brain, I always made the dissections, 
and Dr. Gall explained them to the auditors. 

Since our conjoined publication, I have extended our notions of 
the communication of the nerves and cerebral parts with each 
other, and collected them in a separate section, in my English 
work on the anatomy of the brain. During the last three years, I 
have been occupied with showing the regularity of the cerebral 
portions, and with specifying the individual orgaus and their boun- 
daries. This additional discovery was desirable for phrenology. 
It is also a means to prove that individual parts are wanting in 
various idiots, and in the brain of the Ourang Outang, which, 
however, has the greatest analogy with the human brain. I pre- 
sented these ideas in a paper accompanied with drawings, to the 
Royal Society of London. The council of this learned body per- 
mitted them to be read, but did not think the paper worthy of 
being published in their transactions. My ideas, however, are new, 
no where demonstrated in books, and will be, I am sure, appreci- 
ated by phrenologists, as the completion of the phrenological 
anatomy of the brain. Dr. Gail died without knowing the regu- 
larity of the convolutions and boundaries of the cerebral organs. 

Note 3, p. 40. 

It is curious to hear some opponents object to phrenology be- 
cause I admit a greater number of organs than Dr. Gall, and differ 
from him in various points. Is chemistry to be rejected, or is it 
less true, because the chemical knowledge of Sir H. Davy was 
more extensive than that of Lavoisier, or because this latter did 



99 

not discover whatever may be known in chemical science in fu- 
ture ? Dr. Gall being the first founder of phrenology, remains 
immortal. The success of his labors, too, was immense. He dis- 
covered the situation of twenty-six phrenological organs, I say 
twenty-six instead of twenty-seven, because his organ of verbal 
memory and that of language are to be considered as one. But 
his talent and the sphere of its operations had their limits, and 
since our separation in 1813, Dr. Gall has neither made a new dis- 
covery in phrenology, nor a step towards its improvement. 

The spirit in which he from the beginning conducted his 
researches into the moral and intellectual nature of man, is ex- 
pressed in the publication of the first chapter of a large important 
but unfinished work, entitled Phiiosophisch medicinishe Unter- 
suchungen ueber Natur und Kunst im gesundem und kranken 
Zustande des Menscheu. Wien, 1791. 

The first priuted notice of his inquiries concerning the head, 
appeared in a familiar letter written by Dr. Gall to Baron Retzer, 
and inserted in the German periodical journal] Doutscher Mercur, 
in Dec. 1798. The objects of his private lectures in Vienna 
from 1796 to 180*2, are published by Dr. Froriep and Dr. Walther. 
Further, the whole of the physiological doctrines, as exposed by 
Dr. Bischoff and Mr. Bloede in 1805, are Dr. Gall's exclusive 
property; but every new addition from that period up to 1813, 
belongs to us in common, because we pursued our inquiries 
together. 

My special rectifications of phrenology, and new physiological 
discoveries, begin with our separation from each other in 1813. 
They concern particularly the discovery of eight new organs, and 
the analysis of^ the special powers of the mind, whilst Dr. Gall 
mostly confined himself to the comparison of talents, characters, 
and certain modes of acting, with individual cerebral portions. 
Imitted in every power of the mind the same modes of action ; 
for instance, perception, memory, judgment, and imagination ; 
whilst I classify the mental powers into orders, genera and species, 
and examine the common and special modes of acting of the dif- 
ferent faculties. Further, Dr. Gall ascribed to the senses the 
notions which the mind acquires of existence, and of the physical 
qualities of the external objects, whilst I think those operations of 
the mind to be dependent on cerebral organs. 1 therefore speak 
of immediate and mediate functions of the external senses; in the 
former the mind takes cognizance by the assistance of the senses 
alone; in the latter it is assisted, besides the senses, by cerebral 
organs. In general, my philosophical views in phrenology differ 
widely from those of Dr. Gall. — The moral and religious consider- 
ations of phrenology, too, as they are taught in Great Britain, are 
conceptions of mine. Dr. Gall never endeavored to point out the 
standard of natural morality.— In the natural language I discover- 
ed several principles in addition to that found by Dr. Gall: that 
the movements of the head, body, and extremities, are modified 



100 

by the seat of the organs in action. Moreover, in the practical part 
of phrenology, and in examining the development of the special 
organs, I began to pay more attention to the breadth of the organs 
than Dv. Gall was accustomed to do, and directed phrenologists to 
attend to the individual regions of the head, in reference to the 
three lobes of the brain, and to the three regions of the animal 
propensities, the human sentiments and intellectual faculties, 
rather than to the protuberances and depressions to which Dr. 
Gall attached himself almost exclusively. In short, the compari- 
son of Dr. Gall's works with my publications on phrenology, on 
its philosophical principles, on education, insanity, and other mat- 
ters, will best show how much I have contributed to extend and 
improve phrenology, and to forward its study. 

Note 4, p. 42. 

No one, acquainted with the Edinburgh Review, will doubt that 
it was the greatest desire of the late editor and his party, to upset 
phrenology per fas et nefas. In Dr. Gordon's celebrated attack 
upon the new doctrines in the 49th number, even our anatomical 
discoveries were treated with unsparing expressions. In No. 88, 
of the Review, Mr. Jeffrey himself tried his wits and powers to 
deliver the public from all the phrenolog cal absurdities. Though 
he had candor to avow that he is not learned in anatomy, he 
hoped, however, to deprive phrenology of its pretensions. His 
lucubrations, it is true, produced a temporary effect, but his igno- 
rance in phrenology, and his sophistical proceeding, were sure to 
turn at last against the literary delinquent himself In a note to 
the 89th number, Mr. Jeffrey stated that 'if we rind at the end of 
a few more years that the science is still known by name among 
persons of sense, we may think it our duty to look once more 
into its pretensions, and give ourselves another chance of conver- 
sion.' 1 give Mr. Jeffrey up to his modified feeling of duty, and 
rely on the truth of phrenology. 

But as far as the Edinburgh Review is concerned, in reference 
to our anatomical discoveries, and the basis of our phrenological 
principles, there is an immense change from No. 49 to 94. In the 
latter, there is an article on the nervous system, where special 
fuuctions are ascribed to individual nerves ; where it is admitted 
that 'in the nervous system alone, we can trace a gradual progress 
in the provision for the subordination of one (animal) to another, 
and of all to man ; and are enabled to associate every faculty which 
gives superiority, with some addition to the nervous mass, even 
from the smallest indications of sensation and will, up to the high- 
est degree of sensibility, judgment, and expression. The brain is 
observed progressively to be improved in its structure, and with 
reference to the spinal marrow and nerves, augmented in volume 
more and more, until we reach the human brain, each addition 
being marked by some addition to, or amplification of, the powers 



101 

of the animal — until in man we behold it possessing some parts 
of which animals are destitute, and wanting none which theirs pos- 
sess.' (p. 443.) — Is this not eminently phrenological ? 

1 Eveu within our own time (says the Edinburgh Reviewer, No. 
94,) although many great anatomists had devoted then selves al- 
most exclusively to describing the brain, this organ used to be de- 
monstrated by the greater number of teachers, in a manner which, 
however invariable, was assuredly not particularly useful. It was 
so mechanically cut down upon, indeed, as to constitute a sort of 
exhibition connected with nothing. The teacher and the pupil 
were equally dissatisfied with the performance, and the former 
probably the most. The latter soon gave up the painful attempt 
to draw any kind of deductions from what he witnessed, and dis- 
posed of the difficulty as he best could, when he had to render an 
account of what he had seen. Dp to this day our memory is pained 
by the recollection of the barbarous names, and regular sections of 
what was then the dullest part of anatomical study, which, although 
often repeated, left no trace but of its obscurity or its absurdity. 
Here an oval space of a white color, and there a line of grey or curve 
of red were displayed ; bete a cincritious, there a medullary mass ; 
here a portion white without, and grey within, there a portion 
white within, and grey without; here a gland pituitary, there a 
gland lii: nd ; here a ventricle, there a cul-de-sac, with 

endless libres, and hues, and globules, and simple marks, with ap- 
pellations no less lanciiul than devoid of meaning.' (p. 447.) Is 
this not quite the language which Dr. Gall and myself used In dis- 
sectiiiir the brain to our classes? Why then are our names never 
mentioned in the article, since we have introduced a new and 
better method of dissecting the brain ? At all events this article is a 
powerful pleading of the phrenological principles, and the Edinburgh 
Review is an evident proof that truth must prevail. 

Xote 5, p. 44. 

Since the time when this article was published in the Foreign 
Quarterly, I have delivered many courses of phrenology to numer- 
ous and most respectable classes ; for instance, in the beginning 
of 18*28, three in Edinburgh ; in the spring of the same year, two in 
Gla- 89, at Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Wake- 

field. Manchester, Liverpool, and several other places. Mr. 

George Combe, too, lectured on Phrenology in Dublin, during last 
April, with the greatest success. The phrenological collections in 
London, Edinburgh, and at various other places, have largely in- 
creased. In short, phrenology is propagated with unabated zeal, 
and numerous converts are made in favor of it. The London En- 
cyclopedia, under the article Craniology, referred to that of phre- 
nology, on condition that the pretended science should not have 
'evaporated before that time.' In the 33d part, however, when the 
turn of phrenology came, a favorable articleap peared. The great 
9* 



102 

change which meanwhile took place in the Edinburgh Review itself, 
is already mentioned in Note 4. 

Note 6, p. 62. 

Phrenology, in establishing the knowledge of man, must become 
the basis, not only of moral philosophy, education, and legislation, 
but also of the science styled political economy. It will teach 
those who constantly speak of the march of intellect, that intellect 
is only one part of of the human mind ; that knowing to read and 
to write is not the first basis of common welfare ; that masters alone 
cannot give talents, nor precepts produce morality. It will exer- 
cise a great influence on the welfare of nations, in indicating clear- 
ly the difference between natural and arbitrary nobility, and in 
forming the relations between individuals to each other in general, 
and between those who govern and those who are governed in par- 
ticular. Further, it will dispose governments who take interest in 
the happiness of their subjects, to think of means of making them 
not only rich, but also healthy, virtuous, and wise : and should they 
not succeeed to produce such eminent results, a great merit will be 
due to them for preserving individual families and their nation at 
large from degeneracy. The laws of the hereditary descent in the 
physical, moral, and intellectual constitution of man, will offer the 
most important considerations to their study and reflection, and 
those laws can be understood. by phrenology alone. 

Note 7, p. 76. 

Phrenology has been objected to, because criminals have been 
described as possessing at the same time certain organs of the ani- 
mal feelings and of human sentiments large. But does this appar- 
ent contradiction in organization not coincide with a contradiction 
in character, not only among criminals but also in many other per- 
sons? First, if criminals possessed only the organs of the animal 
propensities large, and were deprived of those ofthe human senti- 
ments, could they be declared guilty ? Hence tlie legislator and 
judge, in inflicting pains and even capital punishment; suppose 
counter motives against criminal propensities. Notak those coun- 
ter motives, as well as the brutal propensities, depend on cerebral 
organs, and the only reasonable thing which can be said on this 
point is, that criminals are guilty, and their criminality great, in 
proportion to their human sentiments and intellect with which they 
are endowed. The object of phrenology is only to show such states, 
which in reality are not rare. The ancients had Nemesis as a di- 
vinity of vengeance; and, since the Christian era, there have been 
criminals who performed religious ceremonies, and said prayers, 
in hopes that they might be successful in executing their heinous 
plans, and who, after fulfilling their evil deeds, gave thanks to some 
■uperior beings Why should it be impossible to find in such indi- 



103 

viduals the organs of veneration and marvellousness large, as well 
as some of the animal propensities r Whilst lecturing for the sec- 
ond time at Manchester, in October, 1829, several gentlemen, 
among them one of the first magistrates, went with me through the 
prison. Amongst various criminals whom we examined, a female, 
condemned to fourteen years transportation, was presented to us. 
Her organ of acquisitiveness was large, but those of cautiousness 
and conscientiousness were small. At the same time I perceived 
the organs of veneration and marvellousness large, directed the at- 
tention of the gentlemen who were with me to this contradiction 
of dispositions, and manifested the wish to be informed about her 
devotional conduct. We then learned that her behavior in the 
chapel is exemplary, and that on the preceding Sunday she had 
been rewarded for it by the chaplain with a prayer-book. Many 
criminals are faithful, and act with a feeling of honor towards their 
companions, but ' deceitful and treacherous with the rest of man- 
kind.' Dr. Gall knew a devotee who kept several mistresses, gave 
them prayer-books, and exhorted them to devotion. Do not con- 
querors and invaders sing Te Deum lor having immolated thou- 
sands of innocent victims? Do we not observe, in daily life, that 
individuals are pious and charitable at one time, preach even ser- 
mons, and write moral and religious treatises, but who at another 
time indulge in sensuality and debauchery, and degrade themselves 
to the level of the brute creation ? Mr. Greg, in his answer to Mr. 
Stone's pamphlet on Burke and Hare, pointedly says, ■ Every ob- 
server of human nature, in its ever varying phases, must have been 
surprised and confounded by the inconsistent and anomalous qual- 
ities which present themselves in the same character, sometimes 
simultaneously, sometimes in the order of succession. We could 
point out many who, calm and placid on all other occasions, be- 
come fiery and ferocious the instant that gunpowder word phre- 
nology is mentioned.' 

Are not the reviewers partial one day and impartial another time ? 
Bonaparte's carelessness of human life, in the mass is generally 
known, but the instances are not rare where in individual cases 
his humanity was very great. Mr. Bourienne, in his Memoirs of 
Napoleon, states, that in the voyage to Egypt, when a man fell 
overboard, the Commander-in-chief had no repose till he was sav- 
ed. Napoleon invariably directed the ships to lay to, and ordered 
the individuals who had exerted themselves to be well rewarded. 
One night the crew were all alarmed by the cry of 'a man over- 
board,' which resounded from one end of the vessel to the other. 
Bonaparte ordered the ship to be laid to. It proved, however, in 
the end to be nothing more than a quarter of an ox, which had 
slipped from the provision-hook. Bonaparte wisely ordered that 
on this occasion the sailors should receive a more than ordinary re- 
ward.' * It might have been a man, and these fine fellows had not 
shown less courage and zeal than if it had.' So spake he who was 
on his way to immolate thousands and tens of thousands, and at a 
moment when he was most anxious to escape the English fleet. 



104 

In numerous instances Bonaparte seemed to be fond of pardoning, 
be it from policy or from sensibility. But it required but a shadow 
of danger to his political existence to justify in his eyes any act, 
however bloody, however inhuman. He was sensible to individu- 
al sufferings when it did not interfere with his military or political 
projects ; but in that case, it was his maxim to steel himself against 
all softer feelings. He used to say : ' Unless the heart is firm, no 
one ought to meddle with affairs of either war or politics.' 

[The examples of contradictions in character and understanding 
are very common ; even in the history of the Jews, and in individ- 
uals who were considered as inspired ; nay, in popes, who pretend- 
ed to be infallible. David was not mere wisdom and virtue ; and 
the aberrations of Solomon were great and numerous, notwith- 
standing his extraordinaiy wisdom. 

Pascal, and other divines, have considered it as one of many oth- 
er superiorities of Christianity, to represent man as a mixture of 
good and evil. Did not the great apostle Paul himself complain 
of two laws, one in his members, and the other in his spirit, 
confessing that lie saw and felt the better and did the worse ? 
Phrenology alone furnishes the best natural explanation of this 
opposition in the animal and human feelings of the same individu- 
al. Further, phrenology alone explains why only a few are ge- 
niuses either in virtue or talent, whilst some others are characterized 
by mere brutal tendencies; — why some excel in certain dispositions 
but are middling in others, and almost defective in still others:— fi- 
nally, why the great bulk of mankind are followers of their leaders, 
and apparently the work of ocasional circumstances, but middling 
in all their proceedings. 

The apparent contradiction in powers and cerebral organization 
does not only exist in man, but also in animals. John Blackwall, 
Esq. in a paper read before the Literary and Philosophical Society 
of Manchester, March 23d, 1826, proves from direct observations 
that the swallow tribe, particularly the house-martin, notwithstand- 
ing their great parental affection which is powerfully exerted dur- 
ing the breeding season, at the moment of their migration abandon 
their eggs, or even consign their offspring to a painful and linger- 
ing death, in direct opposition to their feeling of parental love, 
which is so intense at other times. A female dog may be kind to 
her puppies and her master, but fierce with strangers. A cat may 
be very mild and playful with her mistress, but most cruel with a 
mouse. Phrenology, in showing the special powers in man and 
animals, clearly accounts for such apparent contradictions. 

Finally, it is to be remarked, that in applying phrenology to in- 
dividual criminals and their cerebral organizations, their disposi- 
tions, motives of action, and determinate actions should never be 
confounded with each other. Phrenology examines merely dis- 
positions in relation to organization ; but the actions require the 
consideration of motives and of external occasional causes. A last- 
ing motive will always be found accompanied by cerebral develop- 
ment, and here, for instance, the desire of acquiring is the princi- 



105 

pal motive of a murder, the organ of acquisitiveness will be found 
large, and destructiveness acts as a mere means of satisfying the 
strong desire. 

The determinate actions, on the other hand, always depend on 
external circumstances. Hare an I Burke, for instance, had the 
animal propensities stronger and their respective organs larger than 
the human sentiments and their organs; hence their animal nature 
being excited, would overpower their human sentiments. Yet 
Burke was still obliged to take whiskey to suppress his better feel- 
ings ; but the atrocious crimes themselves of those villains were 
entirely dependent on the local situation of their existence. In 
France or Germany they never could have been guilty of their 
atrocities, since the excitement of such a living and the opportuni- 
ty of selling the murdered would have been wanted. In both coun- 
tries several murders have been detected from th^ difficult/ of con- 
cealing the murdered, whilst in Great Britain, the greatest facility 
is offered, not only to conceal victims, but even to be dearly paid 
for them. This alone should invite the legislator to provide for 
better means than are in use to enable the medical profession to. 
study an indispensable branch of their art. At all events, contra- 
diction of character is no objection to phrenology. 

Note 8, p. 87. 

Medical men are frequently called upon to decide about the real- 
ity of phrenology. This, however, is a great mistake, since it is 
positive that, before our tiiu i the medical profession was quite ig- 
norant of the structure and functions of the brain, in hs state of 
health and disease. Medical men, therefore, before they study 
phrenology, have no more right to judge of its reality than any 
other man or woman who never attended to it. He who can per- 
ceive differences in size and forms, and compare coincidences or 
cerebral development with mental dispositions, and who takes the 
trouble of examining nature, — he alone is entitled to form and give 
an opinion concerning the pretensions of phrenology. There have 
been many medical men, wno, though ignorant of the new science 
and its foundation, wished to keep up the craft which surrounds 
their profession, and who with great self-complacency declared 
phrenology to be nonsense. Their motives seem to have been of 
two kinds: as long as the public opinion was against phrenology, 
those with predominant secretiveness and acquisitiveness thought 
it the most proper to go with the tide. Jn proportion as the public 
opinion turns in favor of phrenology, these opponents become si- 
lent. Others with predominant organs of self-esteem and firmness, 
and smaller conscientiousness, think it necessary to maintain till 
the end of their days that which they have oncy said, viz.; phre- 
nology to he nonsense and quackery. Nature will take charge of 
them, and send younger brains, open to conviction, truth, and new 
discoveries. The march of intellect is quicker in our days than it 



106 

was in former times, yet it is stili very slow. Before new doc- 
trines are generally admitted new generations must rise. The 
discovery of Newton was not a system of opinions, but the gene- 
ralization of facts, made known by experiments ; it was brought 
forward in a most simple and unpretending form, and had every 
thing to recommend it ; yet a host of enemies appeared to attack 
that which posterity was to confirm. Newton had published his 
doctrine thirty years, when the principles of Descartes were still 
taught at Cambridge. Gall and myself have taken, and I still take 
all possible means to propagate and teach our discoveries. 
Though their reality is admitted more and more, public teachers 
show the greatest reluctance to adopt and propagate them to their 
pupils. Since — years I repeatedly show a better method of dissect- 
ing the brain : all medical men agree that the old and usual method 
of dissecting this organ offers nothing to recommend, but many 
reasons to reject i: ; that every one, who does not make anatomy 
his particular study, soon forgets everything that he has learnt of 
the brain, as soon as he has passed his examination before the 
medical authorities ; yet at this very day the teachers of all medical 
schools are obliged to go on with the anatomy of the brain in the 
old absurd way, in order, as they say, to prepare their students for 
examination. Thus the old schoolmen must die before a better 
method of dissecting the brain can be generally introduced. 
However, let me say that medical men who neglect the study of 
phrenology, and think it below their dignity and wisdom, have to 
choose between self-esteem and ignorance, or modesty and knowl- 
edge. 

Note 9, p. 88. 

'The votaries of phrenology are said to be third-rate men — per- 
sons without scientific or philosophical reputation. They are not 
entitled to challenge the regard of those who have higher studies to 
occupy their attention.' The assertion that no men of note have 
embraced phrenology, is not supported by fact. The great success 
with which I have hitherto lectured in London, Cambridge, Bath, 
Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and many 
other places ; the respectable classes which never decreased in 
number, but always increased as the course went on, so that my 
last lecture was every where the most numerously attended, — is for 
me a certain proof that phrenology excites the interest of enlight- 
ened minds, whenever it is fairly presented. I, however, am not 
willing to occupy the public with the personal merit of phrenolo- 
gists ; but it may be interesting to understand the talents which our 
opponents display, the profundity of their knowledge, the consis- 
tency of their judgment, the fairness of their proceedings, the sin- 
cerity of their motives, and their eminence in every respect. It 
may be noticed, as a general though singular remark, that many of 
those who belong to the pretended liberal party, and who speak a 



107 

great deal of the march of intellect, are the most inveterate ene- 
mies of phrenology, though this science will do more for the wel- 
fare of mankind than all other means of improvement together. — 
The probable cause of this class of opponents is, that their literary 
gospel, the Edinburgh Review, without knowing phrenology, had 
declared against it. Now, leaders of any kind do not wish to ap- 
pear to be in the wrong. Predominant self-esteem, firmness, and 
love of approbation dispose the owner of such powers to look eve- 
ry where for the first place ; and the same feelings, if not guided 
by conscientiousness, prevent him from changing his former decis- 
ions, or, at least, from avowing such a change of mind. I pardon 
the adversaries among the liberal party, because they do not know 
what they do ; and turn myself in particular to the Critical Review- 
ers and anonymous writers of the public press, who repeatedly 
announced phrenology to be entirely upset. Mr. George Combe, 
in his answer to Mr. Stone's contrived observations on the heads 
of Burke and Hare, pointedly remarked, that 'the very fact of re- 
peating the same declaration year after year, since 1815, when Dr. 
Gordon's celebrated attack on phrenology appeared in the 49th 
number of the Edinburgh Review, seems never to have struck the 
critics as demonstrating its falsity and absurdity. If phrenology 
was refuted by Dr. Gordon, why did they laud Dr. Roget for de- 
molishing it? — If Dr. Roget succeeded, why did they praise Dr. 
Barclay so extravagantly for subverting what was already over- 
turned ?— If Dr. Barclay was a fatal enemy, why did they extol 
Mr. Jeffrey to the skies as the prince of all anti-phrenologists ? — If 
Jeffrey left no shred of the science sticking to another, why did 
they sound a loud acclaim to Sir William Hamilton for his repeat- 
ed victories over its scattered members ? and if Sir William's 
brows were decorated with well-earned laurels on account of his 
magnanimous achievements, why do they now cling to Mr. Stone, 
as if no other champion had tilted with success against phrenolo- 
gy ? The only inference that can reasonably be drawn is, that 
those who uttered those eulogiums, entertained a great, yet childish 
prejudice against phrenology ;— that they dreaded its ultimate tri- 
umph, as implying a censure on their own conduct towards its 
founders — but that, even while they condemned it, they were con- 
scious of being ignorant both of its nature and its evidence, and 
were beset by that inward misgiving, that secret uneasiness, which 
ever haunts those who oppose truth on the strength of prejudice 
alone. It was this state of feeling which caused them to hail with 
deep interest, every shadow of an argument, and every phantom 
of a fact by which they might justify to their own minds the 
doubtful conduct which they had pursued.' 

The great critics of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, de- 
serve a particular notice. They, of course, must think themselves 
of the first-rate men — persons of the greatest scientific and philo- 
sophical reputation, and therefore assume the mighty wz of sove- 
reignty. The conscientious feelings of the former Editor of the 



108 

Edinburgh Review must be mortified to see that his successor, in 
No. 94, has acknowledged the basis of phrenological principles, 
though he did not mention that name, whilst the Quarterly con- 
tinues to assail phrenology, probably to cover his shuffling con- 
duct: but the readers should mind their being deceived. 

In No. 77, in alluding to Dr. Granville's remarks on the supposed 
skull of Charlemagne at Aix- la- Chape lie, the Quarterly Reviewer 
says, ' We have a higher opinion of Dr. Granville's sagacity, than 
to suppose him capable of being deluded by so gross a piece of 
quackery, as craniology — for that is the proper name. Let him 
leave that, by all means, to the young gentlemen of Edinburgh, 
who pretend to believe so strongly in the infallibility of their patron 
Spurzheim, as a good catholic does in that of the pope, each equal- 
ly contrary to common sense and bun. an reason. While on this 
subject, we Will tell those northern bumphunters a little anecdote 
of their oracle which we know to be true. 

' On visiting the studio of a celebrated sculptor in London, his 
attention was drawn to a bust with remarkable depth of skull, from 
the forehead to the occiput. * What a noble head,' he exclaimed, 
' is that, full seven inches ; what superior powers of mind must he 
be endowed with who possesses such a head as is here represent- 
ed!' 'Why, yes,' says the blunt artist, 'he certainly was a very 
extraordinary man ; that is the bust of my early friend and first 
patron, John Horn Tooke.' 'Aye,' answers the craniologist, 'you 
see there is something after all in our science, notwithstanding the 
scoffs of many of your countrymen.' ' Certainly,' says the sculp- 
tor, ' but here is another bust, with a greater depth, and a still more 
capacious forehead.' ' Bless me,' exclaims the craniologist, taking 
out his rule, 'eight inches! Who can this be? This I am sure* 
must belong to some extraordinary and well known character/ 
' Why, yes,' says the sculptor, ' he is pretty well known, it is the 
head of Lord Pomfret.' 

Now my simple answer is, that this little anecdote, which the 
Reviewer knew to be true, has never occurred, and never could 
occur with me, since I never measure skulls or heads by inches, 
nor do I ever use language in correspondence with such a fallacious 
proceeding. The whole story, in reference to me, is an unfound- 
ed assertion, and ' he who uses such weapons, will find that they 
must necessarily recoil upon himself, and fatally pierce his own 
reputation, both for sense and veracity.' 

The simple report of this contrived story, proves the Reviewer's 
peculiar veracity : let us now see a proof of his sense and perspicaci- 
ty. In No. 81, of the Quarterly, art. Gooch on Insanity, p. 176, in 
a note we find — 'The following anatomical facts, selected from 
Wenzel's celebrated w T ork, de penitiori structura cerebrihominis et 
brutorum, show that up to the 7th year of life, very great changes 
are going on in the structure of the brain, and demand, therefore, 
the utmost attention not to interrupt them by improper or over ex- 
citement : just that degree of exercise should be given to the brain 



109 

at this period, as is necessary to its health, and the best is oral in- 
struction exemplified by objects which strike the senses. The di- 
mensions of the brain proper, are as follows: 

length. Inches. breadth. Inches. 

At the 3d mth. after conception - LJL 



At birth 4 1 

6 

At the 7th year - - 6 or 7 

At the 80th year - - 6 or 7 



1* 

3a to 44 

5 to 6 
5 to 6 



1 It appears therefore, says the Reviewer, tha the brain proper, 
increases rather more in length and breadth during the six months 
immediately preceding birth, than during the first seven years af- 
ter birth, that those dimensions arrive at their maximum at the age 
of seven, and they sutler no change during the whole of after life. 
The weight of the whole brain arrives, most commonly, at its maxi- 
mum at the age of three years, and remains without diminution 
the whole of after life.' 

The latter conclusions are heresies in phrenology, and I beg the 
reader to mind that the great literary judges did not perceive the 
fallacious proceeding of Wenzel to compare different individuals in 
order to make out the size of the brain at birth, at seven years, and 
at eighty years. I have seen in children of seven, even of three 
brains and foreheads (the residence of intellect) than 
in some adults who opposed phrenology ; but does this prove that 
the adults had already the same size of brain at their age of seven 
years, and that the brains of children seven years old do not in- 
crease in after life ? Whoever will observe the same individual 
will arrive at results very different from Wenzel's statements and 
the Reviewer's conclusions. Critics, however, of so little sense of 
comparison and discrimination dare to decry a science of which 
they know nothing, and which they never wish to study. 

In adverting to the language of our opponents, one might think 
that phrenology could not be true before they had given their sanc- 
tion. But who will maintain that any doctrine is true because it 
is recommended by reviewers, believed by all who are wise, or 
considered as such, and even admitted and taught in public schools ? 
On the other hand, shall any opinion be declared as false, because 
it is new and rejected by the established professors, by the wise of 
the age, and by all who have influence on society and its institu- 
tions ? Was the scholastic philosophy the best, because it enjoyed 
the greatest reputation during many centuries? Or was Galileo in 
the wrong because his doctrine was opposed by the greatest au- 
thority of the time, by an authority considered even as infallible ? 
Shall the poetical talent of Burns and Lord Byron be denied, be- 
cause it was opposed by the great critics of Scotland ? Is the mer- 
it of the late Dr. Thomas Brown as a philosopher less because his 
works were not praised by literary judges, or, as his biographer 
says, because ■ in the reviews of the day, the name of Dr. Brown is 

10 



110 

almost the only one of any celebrity that is never to be found?' 
The reader should remember that the human species is the same 
at all times, and that the same motives produce the same actions in 
ours, as well as informer days: in doctors of medicine and divinity 
as well as in reviewers. Anew science is always opposed by those 
whose reputation suffers from its introduction. Phrenology hav- 
ing an influence on the improvement of all branches of anthropolo- 
gy, has been and is assailed by the professors of every branch, by 
speculative philosophers, medical men, lawyers and divines. Yet 
it spreads and gains ground, notwithstanding this powerful opposi- 
tion* I glory in thinking that the constant and malignant exer- 
tions of the reviewers have been frustrated, even during my life 
time, by the intrinsic power of phrenology itself. My work on 
phrenology, being at its fourth edition, is not due to its being prais- 
ed and recommended by leading reviewers. 

Note 10, p. 91. 

Whilst writing my notes to this article, I asked myself, several 
times, whether it be necessary to speak of an opponent who is a 
mere mouthpiece of an illiberal party, and who conducts the in- 
quiry and discussion with uncommon effrontery, particularly since 
his erroneous proceeding, his fallacious argumentation, his evident 
misrepresentations and misquotations have been clearly shown by 
Mr. George Combe, in the Phrenological Journal, and by an acute 
writer, in a series of articles in the London Medical and Surgical 
Journal. Mr. Stone has been chastised in a manner which must 
deprive him forever of scientific reputation. I refer to those refu- 
tations every impartial reader who wishes to know the arguments 
on both sides, before he forms a decisive opinion. I shall make 
only a few remarks which, however, will be sufficient to indicate 
the spirit in which M. Stone published his lucubrations and com- 
mitted his * literary delinquencies.' 

He begins his evidences with stating that Dr. Gall and myself 
claim the merit of being the discoverers of several propositions, the 
first of which is ' that the brain is a congeries of so many distinct 
parts, each of which is the organ of some innate special faculty.' 

Now this statement is evidently a mere invention of Mr. Stone. 
Neither Gall nor myself have ever said that we claim to be the 
discoverers of the idea that the brain is a congeries of organs. 
This very proposition is developed with details in our joined works, 
as well as in those which every one of us published separately. 
Our works evidently contain more historical quotations than Mr. 
Stone's pamphlet. We were particularly anxious to collect the 
opinions of various ancient and modern writers, who believed in 
the plurality of mental powers and their special bodily conditions, 
since we are aware of the natural tendency of opponents, first to 
reject a new doctrine as long as they can ; but if they can no longer 
resist its reality and force, then to ascribe its discovery to some pre- 



Ill 

decessor : — The reader, however, will feel the difference between 
admitting any general idea, and proving its details, hence between 
believing in the plurality of mental powers and bodily conditions, 
an I specifying the powers, and demonstrating their organs in the 
brain. The latter is exclusively our merit. 

The second proposition which, as Mr. Stone told his readers, 
we claim, is* that the power of manifesting each faculty, is always 
proportionate to the size and activity of the organ or part of the 
brain with which it is supposed to be in immediate connexion.' 
The argumentation of Mr. Stone, in examining this proposition is 
particularly fallacious. I confine myself to repeat our real opin- 
ions. We admit that in the ordinary and healthy state in the same 
brain, the larger organs show greater tendencies and energy than 
smaller ones ; but the reader is reminded not to believe in the 
Edinburgh Review, or any other opponent, who says that the 
phrenologists measure the dispositions of the mind in proportion 
to the size of the cerebral organs. All works on phrenology deny 
this to be possible. In all my works there is a separate chapter on 
the absolute size, and I alwajs conclude that it is not possible, 
even in individuals of the same kind, to measure their faculties ac- 
cording to the absolute size.' But to show how shamefully the 
public has been deceived, let us hear only what the Edinburgh 
Reviewer, who boasted of a 'conscientious discharge of duty,' 
No. 49, p. 229, told his readers, p. 249 :— ' Gall and Spurzheim, in 
affirming that the vigor of intellect is always proportionate to the 
size of the head, seem to have been desirous how far their ef- 
frontery might be carried.' I may answer : not as far as that of the 
wer goes. His conscientiousness is sui generis, and the 
clearness of his understanding too. We place the intellect in 
the forehead, and the critic confounds the forehead with the whole 
head ! 

Mr. Stone particularly insists on phrenology not being support- 
ed by facts. Ho finds only twenty-eight observations in the pub- 
lications of the Edinburgh phrenologists. These in return, 
(Phrenol. Journal, No. 19, p. 468,) call Mr. Stone's assertion l a fla- 
grant absurdity.' It is really puerile to speak of only twenty-eight 
observations in support of phrenology, whilst the phrenological 
collections in Great Britain contain many hundreds of well-au- 
thenticated facts. Further, shall all the observations which Dr. Gall 
sedulously made for above fifty years; shall my exertions since 
thirty years, and all the labors of our disciples be outweighed by 
the authority and ipse dixit of Mr. Stone ? 

Mr. Stone's ' Evidences against Phrenology' had died and were 
forgotten when he published his 'Observations on the phrenologi- 
cal development of Hare and Burke, and other atrocious murder- 
ers.' The opponents of phrenology, with great eagerness laid hold 
on these pretended phrenological observations, and extolled them 
to the skies. When I first read Mr. Stone's pamphlet, I found his 
proceeding quite anti-phrenological, since he measures by decimals, 



112 

as if phrenology were a mathematical science ; — admits in the size 
of the organs, length without breadth ; — denies the boundaries of 
the organs to bo known ; — compares one individual with another, 
and proceeds in opposition to the phrenological principles, as taught 
and applied by true phrenologists ; and I thought, with the Edin- 
burgh Phrenol. Journal, No. 19, p. 559, that these inaccurate ob- 
servations were 'obviously published for the purpose of opposition, 
and ought to be called anti-phrenological.' With respect to Mr. 
Stone's report of the cerebral development of Hare, Burke, and 
other atrocious murderers, I suspended my opinion till I could ap- 
peal to my only authority in phrenology, Nature. Till then, I 
could not think that Mr. Stone could publish a barefaced falsehood, 
in telling his readers that, in comparing the organs of the animal 
propensities with those of the human feelings in Hare and Burke, 
the organs of the moral and religious sentiments were not smaller, 
and those of the animal piopensities not larger, absolutely and re- 
latively, than in individuals of high moral and intellectual charac- 
ter. But since I am in possession of exact copies, from nature, of 
the heads of Hare and Burke, procured by an eminent artist, Mr. 
Joseph, I cannot help believing in Mr. Stone's moral or intellectual 
incapacity of instructing the public about phrenology. In my col- 
lection, among fifty busts and forty skulls (these partly real, partly 
copies in plaster) of criminals, there are not six with so low cere- 
bral organization as Hare aud Burke. — When, beside these evi- 
dent misrepresentations, I also read Mr. Stone's words : 'the skull 
of this murderer (Pepe) which has been repeatedly inspected, ex- 
hibits a remarkable deficiency of the pretended organ of destruc- 
tiveness,' whilst the same skull, during my visit in Edinburgh, in 
1828, was put by Dr. Graham, into my hands, without telling me a 
word of its history, but with the request to give my opinion of the 
skull ; I at once found the organs of combativeness and destruc- 
tiveness very large ; and when I find Mr. Stone's ' Evidences against 
Phrenology' to be evidently 'literary delinquencies,' I must be al- 
lowed to refuse all his authority in any decision about cerebral de- 
velopment, and any phrenological truth. His high-sounding prop- 
ositions must dwindle into absolute insignificance ; and I cannot 
conclude better, than in repeating Mr. George Combe's expressions : 
(See his answer to Mr. Stone's observations) that ' no opponent is 
more admirably qualified than Mr. Stone, to bring into contempt 
the cause of opposition ; not a series of critcisms better adapted 
than the encomiums bestowed on Mr. Stone, to render the press 
ridiculous, in the eyes of reflecting and enlightened men.' 
















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